Oh, the Scandal!
by Moxie
Summary: *Finished as of 5/6/01. Enjoy!* For years Harry has wanted another set of relatives. Well, he may have another set... closer related than he thinks. But... as a scandal cover-up comes to life, Harry is faced with unpleasant realities.
1. The Definition of Scandal

**Scandal - **(skan-dal)

    1. Heedless or malicious gossip.
    2. Disgrace or reproach caused by outrageous or improper conduct.
    3. Censure or open disapproval
    4. One whose conduct results in disgrace or censure.
****
    5. A discreditable event, circumstance, or action.

# # #

Cold sunlight filtered through the pearl blue sky and wove its way down through the atmosphere to catch the droplets of water that had fogged up Harry's glasses. He swore softly and took them off his face to wipe them on his robes.

It was a bright clear December day, and Harry was waiting for the Hogwarts Express to be ready to load. Tomorrow was the first day of Christmas Break, and he was leaving.

"Oh Harry, it's only for a week," Hermione said with an air of cheeriness in her voice. Ron rolled his eyes and scuffed a sneakered toe in the slush that layered the platform.

"One _day_ with that family of his would be too much," he muttered. Ron's eyes were round with anxiety when he righted them again. "I'll save your Christmas package for when you come back."

Harry didn't feel much like replying, but he personally agreed with Ron.

The large scarlet train thumped up to the concrete platform and came to a wheezing halt, blowing off waves of snow-white steam that shone gold in the December sun. The compartment doors flung themselves open, and Harry pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"Merry Christmas," he grunted, hauling his trunk into the nearest open door. When he and his trunk were fully inside, he leaned against the doorframe, and continued grumpily. "Take good care of Hedwig, would you? Drop me a post if anything happens."

"We will!" Hermione called as the door cascaded back into its place. And then, very muffled; "A merry Christmas to you too, Harry!"

Harry could hear the rumble of Ron saying something as well, but the Express emitting another blast of white steam drowned it out. Harry grumpily pushed his trunk neatly into a corner, then found that that didn't suit him, so he pushed it to the other corner, releasing pent-up anger.

_For fifteen years,_ he thought bitterly, _they've been telling me they want me gone, want me dead, and they only put up with me for tax reasons, and I'm a burden... and then, out of the blue, they want me back. This is ridiculous. I should have refused to come._

Of course he knew he couldn't do that - since the Dursleys were his legal guardians, after all - but it felt better to brood.

The train peeped a cheery Christmas whistle before jolting into movement. The sudden shock knocked Harry off balance into one of the chairs in the compartment. It was completely empty save for his trunk, and the absence of people made him even _grumpier_, if that was possible. Angrily he drummed his fingers on the armrest and let his chin fall into his hands. He sat there for a while, as the train stopped jolting and settled into a smooth cascading movement. Then he decided to stop wasting useless time and do some schoolwork.

Snape was a slavedriver, and Harry had a four-scroll essay to do on the use of fennel in various sleeping potions. Due the minute break ended of course - Snape didn't care about schizophrenic relatives that shunned you away one moment, then ordered you back the next.

# # #

The sunny day had left when Harry emerged from his compartment in muggle London - it was now a bleak gray day, and large flakes of snow were falling. The platform was dreadfully slippery, as he found out when he attempted to huff out of the train - and ended up skidding over a patch of ice and falling on his bottom.

Choosing to ignore his fall, he lugged his trunk out of the compartment and stomped angrily - taking care to look for ice - over to the barrier into the muggle world. There were very few other people coming back from the school this winter and the person that regulated when they left the platform wasn't there. The students filed into a line and carefully stepped through the not-solid wall, and into the world of the muggles.

The snow was falling thicker now, and Harry's thin cloth coat was saturated with melted snow, and his black hair was completely covered in snowflakes that was nearly the size of large buttons. Shading his eyes, Harry squinted around for his relatives.

They weren't there.

Dumbfounded, Harry dropped his hand and stared around helplessly at the commuting muggle crowd.

"Hey, Harry! Harry!" 

Harry whipped around and peered through the thick curtain of falling snow. Neville and his grandmother were flagging him down.

"What's up, Neville?" Harry asked half-heartedly, scanning the crowd for his not-present relatives.

"You looked lost."

"In a way, I am."

Neville scratched the top of his dark brown haired head and brushed the snow out of it. "I don't understand."

Harry shook his head and went on looking for the Dursleys. "I'm looking for my aunt and uncle - they're supposed to be here, but they're not..."

Neville's grandmother shook her head at the pair of them. "Frankly, I'm not surprised, dear. Here. Where do your horrid aunt and uncle live?"

Despite the cold, Harry couldn't help but feel a little cozy at that remark, and being called 'dear'. "Privet Drive, number four."

"Come then. Neville and I normally just joint appearate, but we can make a little side stop for you... but not right in front of the muggles, of course. Get your trunk."

Harry obeyed, slopping behind the pair in the dirty London gutter. His shoes were soaked to the bone from melted snow, and he was hideously cold, but he thought it better not to complain.

Neville's grandmother led them through a maze of alleys and side streets before stopping behind a book depository. The small area was concealed by a brick wall on the left side, a row of trees on the right, and the side of the warehouse - no muggles would ever think to look here. Neville's grandmother took out her wand in her wrinkly hand and muttered something while waving it in the air. 

Harry blinked, and suddenly he was standing three doors down from the Dursley's house. So fast! And much more pleasant than Floo powder. No wonder so many underage wizards got in trouble for apperating without a license. Neville smothered a giggle behind his hand.

"Nice aim, Gran."

His grandmother bopped him on the head. "I'm not used to doing three. You're lucky I didn't drop one of us off in China." She turned to Harry and adjusted her wire spectacles with her right hand. "Is this okay, Harry?"

Harry had already taken up the handle of his trunk and was dragging it in the direction of the Dursley's house. He found a smile for Mrs. Longbottom. "Thank you very much. I would have had to walk, otherwise."

Mrs. Longbottom smiled at him and grinned, showing dentures. "Such a dear." Sighing, she glanced sidelong at the space between two houses. "Come along, Neville."

Neville, still grinning, followed his grandmother. Turning back to Harry, he waved. "Merry Christmas, Harry!"

"Happy New Year," Harry replied dully, watching Mrs., Longbottom and Neville wink out of sight again. Grunting, he lugged his trunk through the snow and ice, and bumped it up the three concrete steps that lead the way to the Dursley's front door. Out of cleaning habit, Harry brushed off the collected snow on the brass number '4' that was nailed to the side of the house, and then he knocked.

There were a few seconds of very loud; heavy footsteps before the door opened, and Harry was rewarded by Dudley's pink, fat features. Dudley glared at Harry, before slamming the door in his face.

Harry stood there, incredulously, on the step for a few moments, wondering how to react to that.

Whining sounds erupted on the other side of the thick red door, and it opened again, and this time Harry was grabbed roughly by his forearm and hauled inside by his uncle Vernon. Dudley made another whining squeal and ran up the stairs, knocking off a china figurine as he went.

"It's nice to see you, too," Harry remarked sourly to the broken china bits. Vernon grunted and looked at Harry, dripping melted snow and slush over his foyer. Using his normal tactic of pressing his large, purplish face up into Harry's, he spoke.

"Now listen here. I've got some... some _friends _coming over that are very interested in the drill firm, and..."

Hearing that, Harry groaned inwardly. _Last _time Uncle Vernon had had a possible business deal, things had not at all gone well. In fact, he had met Dobby.

"...and they've been doing some research on my files and they found that I had taken _you_ under my legal care. And they want to meet you."

There was palpable silence that strung between the two. Color rose into Harry's cheeks, color of humiliation. He was going to have to memorize flattering and obnoxious lines - probably saying grossly amplified compliments about Vernon and Petunia - and be used as a tool to make his uncle look good. Harry's cheeks burned bright red, and then sallow from repressed emotion.

If Vernon noticed this sway of sentiment, he didn't say anything. Instead he pointed up the staircase. "Now go and put your_ things _away - _out of sight_ - and come back down for... dinner. You didn't bring that ruddy owl, did you?"

Harry swallowed and kept his gaze fiercely focused on a trampled floral runner that was in the hall. "No," he said quietly, afraid his voice might quiver, "I didn't bring Hedwig." Before his uncle could say anything else derogatory, he bumped his trunk down the hall and laboriously lugged it up the stairs.

His room hadn't changed very much since the summer before - with the exception of new toys that had been broken. Harry recognized the new computer the Dursleys had bought last summer - it had a baseball lodged in the screen.

Clearing his bed of broken knick knacks, he peeled out of his sopping wet clothes and redressed in 'normal' clothes, though it must be admitted that he wavered slightly, thinking of the reaction if he paraded downstairs in his green dress robes.

Finally he walked down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Aunt Petunia was tossing a garden salad - Dudley had finally gotten off of his grapefruit diet, it seemed, but was placed on a strict diet of only greens and protein supplements.

Aunt Petunia pointed to a stack of plates and napkins. "Set the table," she ordered. Harry looked at the pile of plates resentfully.

"Hello, it's nice to see you, Harry," he mimicked in a very high, albeit soft, voice. Wondering what was provoking all of these hostile emotions, he shook his head and started slapping plates on the table.

Dinner passed uneventfully, with Harry munching on his greens like a cow chewing cud, being very careful to keep quiet as Dudley rambled on about Smeltings. He had to bite his lips very hard when Petunia saw Dudley's report card and started to cry from pride - after all, his grade point average was a whopping 1.7 this semester. Uncle Vernon rumpled his son's hair and spoke fondly at the great things his son was going to do with his life, unlike _some _people, who wasted their lives pretending to be magicians.

Harry kept wisely silent.

# # #

By being inconspicuous and quiet over the next few days, Harry was able to learn a lot about the people coming to visit the day after Christmas.

"They're... Japanese," Uncle Vernon said one day, after a luncheon of salad. Harry noted with amusement that his uncle didn't look very pleased at the idea of foreigners.

"They're not coming over here, are they?" asked Aunt Petunia, with a healthy dose of trepidation in her voice. She leaned closer to her husband. "_He's _here," she whispered very loudly, clacking her large teeth together in anxiety.

Harry kept his head bent over his small empty bowl of salad, trying not to concentrate on how his stomach was rumbling from lack of nourishing food.

Uncle Vernon shot a look at Harry from under his thick eyebrows. "They want to meet _him_," he said with disgust. Aunt Petunia collapsed in her chair like those words had sapped her strength. Vernon nodded grimly. "They saw the sheet we had signed for being his 'legal guardians'" - he wiggled his fingers in the air to simulate quotation marks - "and were very intrigued by it. I think this would be a good opportunity to show them how Grunnings is a family firm - always open to strangers with a friendly attitude."

Harry, who had been sucking on his fork, nearly swallowed it.

"Do you have something to add?" Petunia asked in a shrill voice, her dull green eyes daring him to argue. 

Harry, removing the sharp fork tines from the back of his throat, shook his head vigorously no, and resumed quietly sucking, playing that he was too fool to leave the room, even though Dudley had nearly ten minutes before.

"So they're coming here?" Aunt Petunia resumed, turning to her husband. To her and Harry's surprise, Vernon shook his head.

"They want us to meet them at a sushi restaurant just outside of town."

"Sushi!" Petunia lost all color. "I don't want to eat raw fish!"

Vernon slammed his fist down on the table, making the plates - and Harry - jump. Harry decided it was not a good idea to keep placing the fork in his mouth, as he nearly swallowed it again.

"Petunia, damnit, if we don't make this deal, we're not going to be eating _anything_!" Realizing that he had considerably alarmed his wife and Harry - not that he cared about the latter - Vernon uncurled his fist. "If we can force down raw fish, we won't have to do it again."

Harry got up from the table and started, by habit, clearing the dishes away and putting a pot of coffee on. He dumped the beans into the chopper, thinking about what a drag this Christmas was going to be, and how he was ever going to force raw fish down his throat.

# # #

Christmas morning dawned early and cold. Harry was woken on two levels - one because Dudley was noisily clomping down the stairs eagerly for his presents, and the other because Aunt Petunia was at the foot of his bed, yanking his covers off his body and wrenching his window open, letting in freezing puffs of air. Harry yelped and grappled for his bathrobe.

"What was that for?" he asked angrily, folding the terrycloth and knotting the belt snugly.

"I need to air your room out," Aunt Petunia snapped just as angrily, furiously stripping the bed of its sheets and throwing them to the other side of the room.

Fighting his temper, Harry grabbed some clothes and stormed off to the bathroom to take a shower. He didn't bother to go downstairs for presents - there would be none for him under the tree anyway. He would be getting his presents later when he returned to school - his friends promised to keep them there for him, since the Dursleys would have gone insane if Hedwig had come to the house laden with a wizarding gift.

After he had finished with his shower, Harry walked past his room and down the stairs, where Dudley was greedily tearing off hunks of purple wrapping paper from a box. The box contained the newest Pentium processor - and no doubt that he had also gotten the CD burner he had requested as well.

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were enjoying a cup of Christmas tea and watching tearfully as their son devoured his presents. Harry rolled his eyes and went into the kitchen, where he quietly fried himself up his own Christmas present - French toast. He inhaled it almost as greedily as Dudley unwrapping presents; he had eaten nothing but unsweetened oatmeal and cabbage leaves for four days.

After washing up, he went to join the Dursleys watch Dudley unwrap more presents. From what he had gathered from the swatches of dinner conversation Harry had paid attention to, the Dursleys were in serious financial trouble.

After watching Dudley gloat over a new computer game, Harry decided that the Dursleys had no sense of economy.

An hour later, Uncle Vernon summoned him.

"We're out to buy Dudley some new togs for tomorrow," he told Harry, pulling on a sleeve of his wool coat. Harry watched him blankly. 

"He can wear something of Dudley's," Aunt Petunia said briskly, pulling on her new mink. "We can't spare it to spend on _him_."

To keep his temper under check, Harry recited the names of the Royal Riders Quidditch club in his head, starting with the Keeper. _Edmund Brady..._

"Go find something of Dudley's," Uncle Vernon said, flapping his fat hand in Harry's face. "The maroon tuxedo is the best bet... the only stain is the mustard smear on the chest pocket."

Dudley sniggered as Harry's face darkened, imagining himself walking around in a hideous red with bright yellow smudged all over it. 

_Seeker, _he thought desperately, _Kellie Cooper. Reserve Seeker, Brandon Ashley..._

The door closed with a click, and a moment later, the car backed out of the driveway. Harry watched the slightly tipped - thanks to Dudley's girth - Honda rumble down Privet Drive and around the corner.

With resignation he tromped up the stairs and into Dudley's room.

The few times that Harry had been allowed in there, he had not so much as gotten past the threshold. With that much, he was hardly ever left alone in the house. But now he was, and the room was still the pale blue color it had been since Dudley was little, but now the blue was covered in tacked up posters of destroying machines, men with bulging muscles, and - to Harry's great amusement - scantily dressed women.

After admiring the posters for a bit, he looked in Dudley's closet. He kicked the old stuffed animals that were piled in there out of the way and looked for Dudley's dress things.

There weren't many. The selection consisted of three pairs of dress pants, a dress shirt, and a maroon dress coat. Each was strained at the seams, and one of the three dress pants was ridiculously stained with food smears, the other pair was torn along the seams. The lapel of the maroon dress coat had a large yellow splotch on it. Harry, in disgust, dropped it on the floor.

"_Wonderful_," he muttered, slamming the door to Dudley's room behind him. He looked up at the ceiling and thought. His eyes met a swinging cord that was suspending from the ceiling. The attic.

_Maybe there's a pair of pants or the like up there,_ he thought. Pulling the cord released a stepladder up. The hinges were very rusty and Harry had to attack a couple of them with a spray can of WD-40 before they would cooperate. More than ever he wished he were a trained wizard so he wouldn't have to rely on muggle contraptions.

After scrambling up the slightly moist wooden ladder, he had to stop for breath. The air was a lot thicker and moister than the downstairs, and it was very, very warm. He shed his large sweatshirt before standing up.

Everything was organized into labeled boxes and trunks. There were several boxes with a large letter 'D' on them, for Dudley. For amusement he opened one of these boxes - inside were lots of little white baby bonnets. Smirking, Harry closed the box.

Most of the boxes were labeled with 'D'. Harry only found one box labeled 'H' - and it was the size of a shoebox. When they were babies, Harry and Dudley interchanged clothes, so all of the clothes that Harry used to wear were in one of the 'D' boxes. This box contained the only things the Dursleys ever bought new for him - a pacifier and a pair of baby booties. Harry held one of the tiny shoes in his hand and smiled at it, a wave of nostalgia sweeping over him.

There were a few 'P' boxes for his aunt. These contained old dresses mostly, as well as a few dried nosegays. The 'V' boxes contained old clothes as well - no dress clothes that were suitable, though, to Harry's dismay.

In the back of the damp attic, there were two medium trunks. Harry turned one around to look for the letter - 'L'.

Harry's heart nearly thudded to a stop in his chest. L for what? L for... for..

_I don't want to think about it, unless it's not. Maybe it's Uncle Vernon's mother. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it' L for..._

L for _Lily_?

Harry opened the trunk slowly, expecting it to bite him. Right on the top was a picture that Harry instantly recognized - Lily and James at their wedding day. He had the exact same picture, except it was moving, because a wizard had taken it. There was nothing written on the back.

The trunk smelled delicately of dried rose petals and age, and so did the photograph. There was hardly anything else in the trunk, to Harry's great disappointment. He lifted out a bundle of white lace and spread it out over the floor.

It was a wedding veil.

His mother was a small woman, judging by the span of the headband that went around the skull. The veil itself was long and lacy, interwoven with pink ribbons... no, they were red. Now they were blue. 

To Harry's immense delight, the ribbons softly melted into different pastel colors. The flowers embroidered in the delicate veil moved slightly, as if in a breeze.

Leaning close to it, Harry smelled rose petals again. Was that what his mother smelled like? Roses? His chest began to ache horribly, and his eyes were beginning to burn, so he folded the veil and placed it back gently.

Below the veil was a roll of black fabric. Taking out that produced a - to Harry's delight - a black tuxedo coat. It was in perfect condition, and Harry slid it over his shoulders. The coat smelled slightly different than the veil, slightly muskier, over the mothball-y scent that seemed to cover everything.

Beaming, Harry pulled the folds of the coat closer to his body and looked at the picture that had been in the trunk. The coat that his father wore and the coat that he was wearing now looked exactly the same.

Harry's view of the Dursleys brightened slightly. Petunia hadn't thrown these things away. He was willing to forgive this entire horrible week for this trunk. He lovingly placed the picture back in the trunk and shut it, still wearing the tuxedo coat. 

The other trunk sat even further back than the 'L' marked one. Harry pulled it eagerly out, hoping to see another 'L' marked trunk, or a 'J' marked one. Wiping off a layer of dust with his hand, he finally found a letter.

'N'.

"N?" he said aloud, sitting back on his heels. "Who here is an _N_?"

Nibbling his thumbnail, he thought. From what he'd heard Petunia say about her parents - Jonathan and Ellie - neither of them were an N. Neither were Vernon's parents. Harry didn't know personally about his father's side of the family, but he seriously doubted that the Dursleys would keep anything of theirs. 

Opening the trunk, Harry saw with great dismay that there was nothing inside. On closer inspection, however, there was a folded piece of paper in the corner of the small trunk. Prying it out, he unfolded it.

It was a black and white photo of three girls. It was very badly creased, but after smoothing it out as well as he could, he adjusted his glasses and took a closer look.

They were all in the sandbox, laughing and kicking sand in the air, and pounding it into a castle form. One of them was tall and plain, with a hooked nose and large braced teeth - she looked about twelve. Looking closer, Harry swore he recognized Petunia's conspicuous teeth. She had had braces?

The second one looked a little younger than eight. She was small and dark haired, thrusting a sand-encrusted fist in the air that held a flag. She was laughing. Harry was pretty sure that that was his mother. She looked a lot like the pictures he had in his moving picture album downstairs.

The third looked somewhere between the ages of Lily and Petunia. She had very long; light colored hair and light eyes. She was the skinniest of the three, and was smiling a Mona Lisa smile, not laughing uproariously like the other two.

Frowning, he flipped the paper over, where there was writing in loopy script.

_July 18, 1965. Petunia, Lily and..._

The writing was quite unintelligible. He could only distinguish that Petunia was Petunia because of the large loopy letter that must have represented a P was there, and 'Lily' looked like it had two Ls if you squinted. There was a third name there, though Harry was not at all sure what it was. It started with an 'N', then as most cursive letters do, they simply ran in to each other like waves.

Still frowning, Harry tucked the picture into his pocket. When he was back at Hogwarts, he could smooth out the picture with spells - maybe even coax some life and color into it. Or perhaps he could try and read that unintelligible writing.

He left the attic, pushing the attic ladder back up into the ceiling. With the picture in his pocket, he trotted off back to Dudley's room.

He could wear his father's tuxedo jacket, he thought as he picked up the shredded pair of black pants in the closet and the white dress shirt with the red punch stain on the back. Nobody could see the stain if he wore the jacket.

_I'll have to borrow one of Vernon's ties_, he thought with resignation. Picking up the shredded black pants, he went to go and find some thread and a needle. He had been darning socks ever since he was seven - sewing pants couldn't be that much harder, could it?

The picture would remain in his pocket.

Author's Note: Wow. It's been a while since I've last written. And yes, I know, there's no scandal yet, but I kind of had to get into the plot a little. and if you ALREADY know the scandal, then... -_-;... you're pretty smart. But, don't say what it is in your review (you are reviewing, right? Please?) if you know, because that would ruin it for everybody else!

Next chapter: Dudley eats raw fish! (Actually, I love sushi. Yummy! ::grins::)

~Moxie ^_^

Disclaimer: Um, nothing belongs to me. Right? ::grins evilly::


	2. Death By Sushi

A/N: I had to up the rating for this chapter... Ron and Malfoy say some pretty potent things when they're pissed off. You get a pretty hefty taste about part of the scandal in this part. Just part, mind you, not the whole thing. Don't forget to review... oh, and, it's not going to seem important now, but just a guide for later - 

'san' - normal politeness

'kun' - your junior

'senpai' - somebody you look up to, like a teacher.

# # #

The sun rose like a soap bubble up on the horizon, swelling large and bloody orange. Ribbons of red glistened over the newfallen snow, and streamed feebly through uncurtained windows, though not yet potent enough to rouse sleeping bodies.

One particular beam of light found its way into Privet Drive, house number four, streaming through the blinds of an occupant's window, where it shot off of a quickly flashing needle.

Using only the slotted light that coursed through his open blinds, Harry Potter raised a pair of black pants up and squinted at his handiwork. He had been up with the sun, carefully putting the finishing touches on his makeshift tuxedo outfit.

It turned out that sewing clothing was quite a bit different than darning socks. The stitching on the dress pants was amateurish at the best, and pathetic at the worst. But at least the pants resembled pants now, not shredded scraps of black cloth. He at least had had the sense to turn the pants inside out before sewing, so most of the glaring mistakes had been hidden anyway.

"Damn," he said, realizing that the legs were uneven. He shrugged and turned the pants right side out anyhow.

They were slightly puckered in the inner thigh area, though he didn't think anybody would notice much if he didn't go around with his legs spread wide open. Along with the sewing of the pants he had also taken them up an inch or two, as well as hemmed the bottom of the stained white shirt so it didn't look atrociously huge.

His father's tuxedo jacket, however, he left in its rightful glory, not caring if the arms were a little too large. Sighing, he pulled on the mended pants and shirt, and then carefully slid into the well-tailored jacket. Over which he knotted one of Vernon's best ties - which was grudgingly lent, but Harry had stated that the least Vernon could give him was a nice tie, and threatening to mail Sirius - which was in a deep shade of aloe green.

Proud of himself, he walked down the stairs with all of the dignity he could muster, it being so early.

# # # 

The sun was now buttery-yellow and high in the cobalt sky. Harry slumped in his seat in the Honda, trying to shield his eyes from the assortment of the sun.

"Mu-um," Dudley wailed, "Harry's takin' up my roo-oom."

Petunia whirled around, dull green-gold eyes blazing. "Move it, Harry!" she commanded.

Harry grunted and squished himself closer to the car door. Everybody was in a foul mood, being on their way to a city two hours away to eat raw fish. Vernon blared his horn out at a motorcycle who passed him, and the motorcyclist responded with an irate gesture that made Vernon sputter and go purple with rage.

Harry kept himself occupied by blocking out his relatives and sorting through all of the Quidditch teams and members that he could think of. Once he had become frustrated enough with trying to remember the Liverpool Swindler's third string set of Beaters, his attention refocused on the picture he had found in the attic yesterday.

_You're being stupid. 'N' was probably just a close family friend who passed away or some rot,_ the sensible, Hermione side of his mind argued, trying to install logic. _You have no proof whatsoever of anything else._

Yeah? shot back the fiery, more whimsical Ron side of him, _Then why did she have her own trunk in the Dursley's attic, Know-It-All?_

The Hermione side of him ignored the Ron side of him. Harry sighed and tuned the friend-ghost-voices of him down. He idly searched for the Harry side of him, only to find nothing.

The car jerked to a halt. Harry's head snapped up. The car had parked in a strip-mall parking lot, made of beige bricks with several different stores.

There was a bagel shop, a shoe store, a grocery store, and a discount lady's apparel store. Between the bagel shop and the grocery store, there was a little outlet that said 'Tei Ciou: House of Sushi' in large, red light-up letters. Below the English sign there was a generous sprinkling of Japanese symbols, significance he could only guess.

"Get out," Vernon snapped, face still fading a purplish hue. He smoothed his mustache out and shut his eyes, breathing deeply. "Everybody on their best behavior, got it?"

There was a mumbling of yeses, and the thoroughly miserable group tromped over the blacktopped parking lot to the sushi restaurant, with Dudley whimpering quietly about missing a television program.

Harry held the glass door open for the Dursleys, and carefully established himself out of sight behind the family. After hanging their coats, the group headed inside.

Everything was a light shade of shined, glossy pinewood. The wainscoting was unfinished pine with an ink black runner of wood separating the wainscoting from the high walls. Potted plants let loose green tendrils to drape over the large window, and there was a bar in the corner, where a man robed in dark blue waved a cleaver at them and called out a greeting in a friendly manner. The Dursleys shrank against the wall.

"Dursley, yes?" Harry looked to his left, where a tiny, petite woman with hair as black as his own stood politely, not meeting their eyes and holding an armful of menus. Her skin was the color of deep brown honey, and her hair had been pulled back into a bun, with what appeared to be colored chopsticks neatly pushed in the soft roll of hair.

"Yes," Harry said softly, as none of the Dursleys seemed inclined to speak. The woman nodded.

"Follow," she said, in heavily accented English. Harry trotted behind, and after some hesitation, he heard the Dursleys follow quietly to a corner of the restaurant.

The table had been set with nothing at all, aside from napkins. Seated in the chairs were two more people, both wearing gold-rimmed glasses, both sipping from brown, handle-less mugs. They smiled at the Dursleys, and the serving girl slipped away as quietly as she came.

The two people stood up, and Harry noted that one was female, despite wearing a deep blue suit like her partner. The man bowed slightly.

"Mr. Yamphiski and Ms. Hobitio, if you please," he said, without the slightest hint of accent. The girl bowed also, and, feeling awkward about it, the Dursleys and Harry bowed also.

"I'm Vernon Dursley, and this is my wife and child, Petunia and Dudley," Vernon said gruffly, not taking his eyes off of Mr. Yamphiski's face. He jerked his round head towards Harry. "That's Harry. Harry Potter."

"It's a pleasure to meet all of you," Ms. Hobitio said, her voice soft. "Please, let us sit." 

After a few moments of fidgeting, it became clear that Mr. Yamphiski and Ms. Hobitio were not going to sit until Harry and the Dursleys did. So, Harry did the only sensible thing to do, and sat, quickly sliding into a slick wooden seat. Vernon and Dursley did the same, as did Dudley, after he grabbed another chair (one chair wasn't simply enough for his girth).

The serving girl returned again, and as discreetly as possible, slid brown, handle-less mugs in front of Harry and the Dursleys. She left and returned a moment later with a teapot, and she poured a green substance into the mugs, before slipping away again.

"Green tea," Ms. Hobitio said, taking a tiny sip. "It's actually quite mild." She placed her mug down, and a few more minutes of uncomfortable silence reigned.

"So, Vernon-san," Mr. Yamphiski said, folding his hands on the table. "You are a representative from Grunnings, I hear." The serving girl returned to fill his mug. "I also hear that they're in quite a bit of financial trouble as of late."

Harry tuned them out. Vernon's drill business had no concern to him. He finally dragged up his courage and took a sip of the green liquid in his mug. He was actually rather disappointed. It didn't have much flavor.

The waitress returned and said something in quick Japanese. Ms. Hobitio quietly whispered something to her, and the waitress nodded and skittered off once again.

"So, Petunia-san," Ms. Hobitio said conversationally, "do you work?"

"Homemaker," Petunia replied shortly, twisting the straps of her purse into a tight little rope.

"And how are you doing in school, Dudley-kun?" Mrs. Hobitio went on, relentlessly polite. Dudley turned a rather sick shade of green and didn't respond.

Harry closed his eyes and made himself calm his raging stomach for shame. He couldn't believe that the Dursleys could be so impolite. He snagged himself to attention at the last moment when he heard Ms. Hobitio say:

"--Harry-senpai?"

Harry was getting quite annoyed with all of the titles that Mr. Yamphiski and Ms. Hobitio were tagging onto their names. What was a 'senpai', anyhow? How did it differ from a 'san' or a 'kun'?

"I'm sorry," Harry said quietly, "I didn't hear what you said."

Ms. Hobitio shook her head, smiling, making her golden earrings jingle. "Never mind it then. I was just asking where you got that tuxedo jacket at - it looks so very familiar."

Harry shot a quick look down at his father's jacket and pulled the folds instinctively closer. "I found it in a trunk," he said truthfully.

Further conversation was cut off when the waitress came back and placed small, rectangular dishes in front of everybody. Harry looked at it curiously. On top of cubed rice there were several unrecognizable pieces of fish, next to which were small cylinders that looked remarkably like tires. There was a pile of green paste next to the tires, as well as thinly sliced pink layers of something. The waitress came back with little shallow bowls the size of sardine tins, and a jar of soy sauce.

Still chatting conversationally, Mr. Yamphiski casually poured himself a small amount of soy sauce into his bowl, while Ms. Hobitio carefully spread the tiniest amount of green paste onto her fish.

"So, Harry-senpai," Mr. Yamphiski said calmly, spreading a napkin in his lap, "I haven't heard much out of you yet. How was your school year?"

Harry mimicked the napkin action. "Always interesting," he replied, carefully choosing his words. His eyes flickered over to Vernon Dursley, who had turned a contained scarlet. Shaking his head, Harry picked up the chopsticks, trying to remember when Hermione had schooled him in using the utensils. It took a few awkward tries, but he finally managed to latch the wooden sticks around the fish. Now what?

He watched as Ms. Hobitio carefully lowered her tire-roll into the soy sauce, quickly spread green paste on it, and popped it whole into her mouth.

"Have you considered Plan B?" asked Vernon Dursley, who was attempting to stay casual, though his clumsy, large hands handled the small chopsticks humorously.

Mr. Yamphiski was about to answer, when an ear-splitting howl echoed throughout the restaurant. Harry dropped one of his pieces of fish on the table whirling around.

Dudley had leapt up from his two chairs and was wailing, running around as fast as he could go (which wasn't very fast); his eyes watering like mad. Petunia had jumped up right after and was skittering after her child, screeching about a lawsuit and trying to soothe Dudley at the same time.

"Oh dear," said Mr. Yamphiski, who - Harry thought - was trying very hard to keep the amusement out of his voice. "He put too much wasabi on his fish, didn't he?"

Harry looked down at the innocent lump of green paste on his plate, and back at the screaming Dudley, who was surrounded by waiters and waitresses, who were forcefully pouring water down his throat. He smiled.

And then he was dripping wet. Harry lunged back from the table, shocked. Mr. Yamphiski stood up immediately, looking extremely apologetic and grabbing Harry's arm. Looking around, Harry saw his glass of green tea had been upset.

"Terribly sorry!" Mr. Yamphiski cried, hauling Harry off to the bathroom. "I am so very sorry, Harry-senpai, it was an unforgivable accident..." The look on his face told Harry that he may as well go and jump off a bridge, he looked so sorry.

"It was only an accident," Harry said belatedly as Mr. Yamphiski opened the door to the men's room and shut it behind them.

To Harry's slight surprise, the next thing Mr. Yamphiski did was whip out a wand and lock the door. Next he muttered something and pointed the wand at Harry's clothes, where the wet tea stain evaporated instantly.

"Somehow, I don't feel that astonished," Harry said dryly, looking at the wand. Mr. Yamphiski smiled and pocketed the wand, after bowing.

"Forgive me. I just heard that you were under the supervision of... _those_ people?" he asked, jabbing his thumb back out the door, where Dudley was still whimpering loudly and Petunia was still screaming about law suits.

"Unfortunately," Harry sighed, rubbing the back of his head.

Mr. Yamphiski shrugged. "I can't begin to tell you - no doubt you've heard this - how sorry I am. Your parents were wonderful people."

Harry had tuned out the pity part of the speech - he had heard it all too much. He snapped back to attention at the last part, however. "You knew my parents?"

"I was in the same house as your mother," Mr. Yamphiski said, walking over to wash his hands. "Ravenclaw."

Harry scratched the back of his head. "She was a Ravenclaw?" He had always assumed Lily Potter was a Gryffindor. 

"But of course... Ms. White was a very intelligent lady." He turned to punch the silver button for the hand dryer.

__

White. My mother's maiden name was White. "Did she have any siblings?" Harry asked over the roar of rushing hot air. Mr. Yamphiski raised an eyebrow and nodded out the door.

"Surely you knew about Mrs. Dursley out there. And then there was... well, not really, I suppose I should say."

"Should say what?" Harry hinted at, feeling very stupid. The hand dryer puttered to a silence. 

Mr. Yamphiski shook his head. "Never mind. I was just talking about an old friend of hers. They looked shockingly similar, though Lily's hair was redder." The yelling outside had died down. "Shall we finish our meal?"

Harry's questions suddenly didn't seem that important any more. He nodded and walked out of the bathroom with Mr. Yamphiski. Only when he had gotten back in the Dursley's car and started driving home did he realize that he was suffering the after effects of the memory stall charm. Feeling angry and nauseated, he quickly fell asleep, despite his cousin's whimpering and his aunt's screaming about foreign foods.

# # # 

"Harry!" was the first thing he heard as he stepped out of the Hogwarts Express the next day, and he caught a mouthful of bushy brown hair as Hermione launched herself at him, squeezing his neck so that his head felt like a boil about to burst. Ron tromped up behind, holding brightly-papered packages of Christmas presents, as well as letters. Hedwig was even there, hooting moodily about being left in the company of Pig, and Pig himself was darting around happily as usual. Hedwig swooped down to land on his shoulder, and nibbled on his hair.

"Hell-wo," Harry said, voice muffled by the mouthful of Hermione's hair. Hermione stepped back and giggled. Small flakes of snow began to fall, making them all chill, and it wasn't long at all before they decided it would be best to go inside for something warm to drink. Ron was nattering excitedly about the Quidditch game that was to take place three days from now, between the Chudley Cannons and the Huntington Highriders. Hermione was talking about how stupid Ron had been the time Harry had been gone.

Harry was so, so glad to be back.

Of course, there was the little nagging problem of the picture tugging at the back of his nerves, but he tried the best to shove it away for the time being. They stepped into the hallway, where Harry was mobbed again by the rest of the Gryffindors, but primarily the Quidditch team, and before he knew it Harry was being dragged back outside again to practice double-side bludger twists for the beginning of the season. Which, as Alicia Spinnet was too glad to remind him, was starting exactly two months, five days, seventy-five minutes, and twenty-three... twenty-two... twenty-one seconds from now.

So Harry told Ron to hold his presents, he asked Hermione to take his trunks, and he grabbed his Firebolt, ready for a free day of flying.

# # #

It wasn't until nearly a week later that he told Hermione and Ron about the picture, and that was only because he grudgingly needed Hermione's help with the charms to smooth it out.

Of course, they were livid about this. "Why didn't you tell us when you came back from the Dursleys?" Hermione asked furiously, rifling through her bookbag for her Advanced Charms textbook.

"Well," Harry said dryly, "first there was Quidditch practice, and then there was detention from Snape because I didn't finish his assigned homework, and _then_ there was the detention from Filch because I was in the restricted part of the library..."

"No doubt looking for _this_," Ron snapped, flipping deftly through Hermione's textbook. "Harry, why must you be such a git? You knew we would have helped you out with this..."

Anger bubbled up to Harry's tongue, and later, Harry would have been the first to admit it was because his friends were right. So he kept his lips tightly sealed and his words inside.

"Let me see the picture." Hermione stuck an insistent hand out, and Harry lunged off his pillows to give it to her. They were all in the boy's dormitory, sitting on Ron's unmade bed. The lights from the tips of three wands was sufficient to light the place, which had the curtains closed, in case any of the boys needed to dress while Hermione was in there.

"Page three hundred and four - picture spells," Ron said, running his finger down the yellowed sheet.

"So you found this in a trunk?" Hermione mused. "We need a de-creasing charm," she added to Ron. Looking over at Harry, she sniffed the air. "Why does it smell strangely like Lavender Brown's perfume in here?"

Harry's green eyes glistened with something like malice, glad to change the subject. "Dean and Lavender..."

Hermione stuck up a hand. "Enough!" she said dramatically, flopping back onto the feather mattress. "My virgin ears!"

"Your virgin nothing," Ron muttered. "Hermione, I can't read this. Is it in Latin?"

Hermione grabbed her wand and slapped Ron across the back for his earlier comment. "Pot, kettle, Ronnie-kins," she said evilly, snatching the book. "And _no_ it's not in Latin, just ornate script."

"Pot, kettle?" asked Ron incredulously. "Yeah, Harry, tell her of all the nights of hot, wild snogging have been going on in _here_."

"Ron!" Hermione protested.

"You're the one that brought up the subject of virginity."

"If we could get our heads out from between our legs?" asked Harry patiently, plucking the picture from the folds of the comforter.

"Two things," Hermione said leisurely, leaning back against the headboard. She put two fingers in the air. "One-" she brought a finger down "-I wasn't talking about _that_ kind of virginity, and two-" now she held a fist in the air "-do you want color, or just for the creases to be gone?"

"Both would be best," Harry said, kneading the crimson blanket.

"_Incardriem Monodrum_," Hermione said. "While holding the picture from its lower left corner and pressing the wand in the upper right." She snapped the book shut, the resulting wind pushing her hair off her shoulders. "Got it?"

"Yeah." Harry pinched the picture between his thumb and forefinger and tapped the upper right corner with his wand. "_Incardriem Monodrum_," he incanted. Gold veins flew out of his wand and over the picture.

The thin piece of muggle plastic started to vibrate, and Harry dropped it out of surprise. Hermione grabbed her wand and pointed to the ceiling. "_Lumos indracule_." A large, bright ball of flame leapt out of the end and stationed itself at the left bedpost, shining bright light into the dimly lit tent of blankets.

The picture vibrated for a few more moments, before there was a crinkling sound and the smallest of the creases disappeared. Then it started cracking loudly, as the larger creases snapped back to the original position. The golden veins of magic sunk into the waxy film, and, very subtle at first, color started wiping its way back onto the picture.

"That was interesting," Ron commented as Harry picked up the picture.

He knew for a fact that the oldest-looking person in the picture was his Aunt Petunia - she had the same frizzy blondy-brown hair, and her eyes were the same snapping dull gold-green. 

From the information he had gathered from his photo album, the youngest person in the photo was Lily, his mother. She had red hair and a bright blue bathing suit on, flashing white teeth, dark green eyes. Harry smiled.

"If you want the picture to move," Hermione said, reading ahead in her textbook, "you have to brew a potion."

Harry didn't hear her. He was squinting at the last person in the photo. She was wearing a green bikini, and seemed to be paying the most attention to the camera. She had pale, pale platinum hair, which may have been dyed. But she had shockingly green eyes, greener than even his own, so green as to be almost black. Squinting at it closer, he thought that he may have misjudged her age - she looked to be older than Petunia when she was in color.

"So, you think she may have been related to your mum?" asked Ron. Harry turned around and bounced skulls with Hermione. He hadn't noticed that they were peering over his shoulder.

"May have," Harry echoed. "I saw a trunk with a 'N' on it in the attic. And-" he flipped the picture over "-that girl's name starts with an 'n'."

"Well," Hermione said after a pause, "we can't jump to conclusions. The trunk in your attic may belong to a deceased family member, and the girl in this picture may be a family friend."

"Her eyes look like yours," Ron commented, before leaning back on his pillows. "I don't think she is related to you, though. She'd have to be a stodgy old thing to leave you on your own for nearly sixteen years and never even drop a post."

"That's right," Hermione said, looking at him in earnest when Harry remained silent. "Maybe she doesn't _want_ to be found, if she's alive and related to you."

Harry's brows creased in frustration. He knew that both Ron and Hermione were right, their observations were too sensible to be dismissed. Though the thoughts weren't too palatable for Harry's liking.

"I need to go back and study for the Potions test tomorrow," Hermione announced, uncomfortable with the silence. "Harry?"

Harry poked his head outside the curtains, to check for partially undressed boys. The dormitory was empty. "Clear."

Hermione gathered her belongings and pointed her wand at the bright fireball that gleamed brightly at Ron's bedpost. "_Nox_."

The ball of light snapped out, leaving the room in semi-darkness. Hermione bid the boys a good night, before walking out.

Ron stretched out leisurely, like a cat, and the resemblance was so uncanny that Harry partway expected him to start purring. "I'm ready to cop out."

"Cop out?" asked Harry.

Ron grinned. "Heard the twins saying it... they got it out of an Orson Scott Card book... never though they'd be one for reading, would you?"

"No," Harry said, shaking his head. Ron's smile melted away.

"You're thinking too much about this," he said, sitting up and cracking his neck to the side. "Besides, how do you ever expect to find her? For all you know, she may be a muggle, and you've got about as good a chance of finding a needle in a haystack finding her anyway."

Harry slumped up on the wall; the weight of what Ron said pressing against him uncomfortably. "I know," he sighed. Ron wouldn't understand - how could he? He already had a family - more family than he needed, in fact. While Ron and Hermione and anybody else could be supportive and kind about it, he could never expect anybody to understand.

"I need to go to sleep," Harry announced, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "See you tomorrow?"

"Bright and early." Ron drew the curtains around his bed, and Harry saw the gleam of Ron's wand from the slit between the curtains - he was studying for tomorrow's Potion test.

Harry didn't find the need to study, since Snape would probably find some excuse to flunk him anyhow. He slid into his bed and drew the curtains around.

The contents of his bookbag were thrown ill-temperedly over the scarlet coverlet - his bookbag had split earlier that day.

"_Lumos_," he muttered, looking at the tear. It was down the seam - not hard to fix.

He kept matches in his nightstand, mostly a matchbox from last Christmas, when the Dursleys had thoughtfully given him a present that apparently hadn't cost them anything at all. Using an incredibly easy transfiguration method he had learned in first year, he quickly changed one of them into a needle. He didn't have any thread, but he did have dental floss, which was stronger than thread anyhow.

Wetting the floss, he poked it through the eye of the needle and started sewing up his bag. As he stitched, he thought.

The girl's name started with 'N'. How many female names started with 'N'? Nicole? No, that was too short. Natasha? No, there was no T in the name. Natoya? Nastiea? Nadia?

The bag didn't take long to sew. After snapping the floss with his teeth, he carefully started loading his books back into his bag.

Until he was bitten. "Ow!" he cried, watching a drop of blood roll down his finger.

"Harry?" Ron asked sleepily.

"I'm fine," Harry said, picking up his Intermediate Charms book, which was the one that bit him.

His Hungarian Horntail replica from fourth year was curled up on it, thin wisps of smoke seeping from its nostrils.

Seeing it sparked something inside of him. The spark grew, as well as his rapidly rising fear. Dragons.

Harry slid the small replica down from the book onto his tissue box. The dragon snorted angrily at being awoken from its nap, but curled back up onto the soft sheets of Kleenex and fell back asleep. Carefully, Harry placed the box on his nightstand, threw his books in his repaired bag, and flopped on his bed, lying there wide-eyed until sleep overwhelmed him.

# # #

"I hate Snape!" Ron yelled, on occasion of leaving the Potion room. "I hate Malfoy too! I hope they both rot in the seventh circle!"

"Ron!" Hermione said severely.

"I mess up on my potion because Malfoy puts salt in it, and _I _get blamed! Malfoy passes with one hundred, and I get a twenty three!" Ron panted, struggling to form the words. "I hate them both!"

"Shut up, Tybalt," Hermione harrumphed, calling him by the name she used for Ron when he was at his most contrary.

"I am _not_ Tybalt!" Ron screamed, stamping his foot on the floor. Several passing students stared at him. "If anybody, Malfoy is Tybalt, the slimy, no-good, cheating, stuck up, little son of a fucking bastard..."

Harry had stayed silent through this exchange, milling over his plan, trying to see if it would work at all.. "I forgot something in Potions," he told Ron and Hermione as an excuse as he turned back down the hall he came. "I'm afraid to leave it there - Snape'd probably burn it in a voodoo ceremony."

Hermione rolled her eyes in the back of her head while Ron grunted. "We'll tell Sprout where you are," Ron called, breaking from his tantrum for a second. 

Harry nodded and casually walked behind a turn in the bend, the way most of the Slytherins left the Potions room. After doing a little research, Harry found that the Slytherins had Transfiguration the next hour, and this was the most economic way to go. Harry just had to hope that Malfoy would take this path.

He did get some strange stares of mixed dislike and curiosity from the Slytherins he walked along their numbers, but Harry diplomatically ignored them and kept a sharp eye out for the silver-blonde head that was Malfoy.

"What are you doing, Potter?" sneered an anonymous voice.

"Last time I checked," Harry responded to the hostile voice, "it was none of your business."

Harry had just about given up on the ideal, when he saw Malfoy rounding the corner to the Defense Against the Dark Arts hallway. Harry quickened his pace.

Malfoy was walking between his two goons, talking to neither, and not noticing him. With a wave of despair, he realized his problem. How was he going to get Malfoy to give him the time of day? Moreover, how was he going to get Malfoy to take him seriously?

This hallway was made of light paneled wood, and the doors were nearly the same color. Harry counted them off, watching, as nearly all of them were open. 

__

The one at the end of the hallway is empty, he thought as he rattled through his knowledge of the Hogwarts layout.

Harry edged closer and closer to the threesome as the empty classroom loomed closer. When they were nearly upon it, Harry dropped his bookbag.

Malfoy's head shot around in time to see Harry lunge at him like a deranged rugby player, knocking him hard in the gut.

"Oomph!" he cried in surprise as he lost his wind. Harry drove sideways and up, spinning the pair - as Goyle stood stupidly and Crabbe made a miscalculated lunge - into the open classroom.

Harry kicked the door shut and heard the lock throw itself. Spinning around, he pushed the struggling Malfoy roughly up against the wall, one hand restraining Malfoy's limbs, the other clamped firmly over his mouth.

_What the hell did I just do?_ "If you're going to yell, Malfoy, I'm not taking my hand away."

Malfoy was shaking in rage, and his gray eyes were shooting curses, but he stopped struggling. Harry eased his hand away, ready to cover if necessary. They stared at each other for a moment, before Malfoy spat hatefully in Harry's face.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" he demanded angrily as Harry wiped his saliva out of his eyes, releasing him. "I didn't even _do_ anything to you and you suddenly get a wild hair up your ass!"

Harry raised his eyebrows, somewhat shocked at Malfoy's use of language. In all the times they had verbally sparred, Malfoy had never said anything that potent. "Actually, I did that so I may have a chance at a civil conversation."

"So you do it by knocking the shit out of me?!"

"No need to swear."

"Like hell there isn't!"

Crabbe and Goyle were beating up against the door with their gigantic fists, and a few Slytherins were trying _alohomora_, but classroom doors were spelled against simple unlocking charms. 

Sighing, Harry tossed his wand to Malfoy, who stared at it. Harry remembered that Remus Lupin had done that to him in his third year to make him more prone to talk. "You're armed, I'm not. _Now _can I talk to you?"

Malfoy balanced the wand on his forefinger before snapping it around in the air. "_Walamish_!" he growled, pointing it at Harry.

It was as if he had been punched in the stomach. "Ah," Harry moaned as he felt the wind getting knocked out of him. He sat hard on the cream-tiled floor. Malfoy tossed the wand back at him. It fell to the floor with a clatter.

"You deserved it," Malfoy said calmly, dragging over a desk and sitting on it. Harry gasped for breath and took his wand back. "Now, what is so important that it required blindsiding me?"

Harry, who was still panting, glared at the boy who was sitting placidly on the desk. "It's not about you," he gasped, "it's about your mother."

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. "I think that your mudblood friends have driven you up the wall."

"Go to hell."

"I _am _in hell, sitting here talking to you."

"First, however, answer my damn question."

Malfoy folded his hands in his lap and waited with mocking patience. Harry dragged himself off the floor and stood over Malfoy. "What was your mother's maiden name?"

"You know, if this is an attempt to probe into the horrors of my past," Malfoy said dryly, after a pause, "you're going about it the wrong way."

Harry sighed. "Just answer the question."

"Not until you give me a good reason why." Malfoy's words hung tauntingly in the air, and Harry had to resist the sudden impulse to punch him in the nose.

"Is everything with you pulling teeth?"

Malfoy opened his mouth and snapped his teeth at Harry. "Haven't had any pulled yet."

"I hate you." Harry said it almost conversationally, as he sorted though his robes, pulled out the picture, and tossed it to Malfoy. "Tell me who's in that picture."

Malfoy looked coolly unimpressed, at the photograph. "I see a badly taken muggle picture of three girls." He looked at Harry. "Look, Potter, it's been fun, it really has, but I've really got to get to class..."

Harry slammed his palm up against the desk, making the other boy jump. "Not until you tell me what your mother's god-cursed name is!"

"Narcissa Marie Malfoy," Malfoy replied, eyes wide. "I don't know her maiden name. Are you happy now? Now that I've paid my debts to the Shrine of Potter, I'd like to leave, if it's all the same to you."

_Narcissa_, Harry thought. The bottom fell off his world. For a moment he forgot that Malfoy was even there, before he felt a hard shove at his shoulder.

"Potter? You still in there?" he sneered. 

Harry snapped. "I hate you," he hissed, sounding serpentine. "I hate your guts, and for my friends I hate you too. I could fill an entire dictionary of the things I would like to do to you if I had the chance, and Malfoy, right now you're _this_ close to me wiping the floor with your intestines." He leaned over the other boy, who had his eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Don't you dare threaten me," Malfoy spat, gray eyes flashing. "Unless you want to be slandered in the night, and your little mudblood friends hanging by their toes in the hallways."

Harry's eyes burned black. His body took over his mind, and his next action was to punch Malfoy hard across the right side of his jawbone. Malfoy let out a faint cry of surprise, and fell off the desk, striking his head against the corner of the next table and falling to the ground with a dull thud. Blood dripped out from his nose, smearing over the gray tiles.

"Oh _damn_!" Harry growled, dropping to his knees and hauling the dazed boy to a sitting position. "Malfoy? Are you all right?"

Malfoy's head bobbed unpleasantly on his neck. Harry grimaced and pinched the other boy's nose to stop the bleeding. Malfoy jerked once, twice, and for a moment, Harry thought he was having a seizure, before Malfoy's hands jerked up and snatched Harry's hands away from his nose.

Harry backed away as Malfoy righted himself, Malfoy's pupils fuzzy and dilated as he stared inscrutably at Harry, lurching to his feet.

"_Bastard_!" Malfoy cried, swinging forward with all the accuracy of a drunken man, missing Harry's head by three feet and falling forward with the momentum. Harry grabbed him from under the shoulders before he fell again.

"Malfoy, give it up," Harry groaned, forcing the other boy into a seat. When Malfoy tried to lunge forward at him again, Harry incanted for cords to bind Malfoy into the chair. "At least wait until you can see straight before you try and kill me."

Malfoy tugged against his bindings for a few more seconds before looking down, turning a sallow pink color. "What the hell do you want from me?!" Malfoy roared, landing a hefty blow on Harry's left shin with his untied feet. "Untie me!"

Harry howled and hopped around on his right foot, resisting all urges to curse Malfoy while he was tied into the chair. "I want to know if you're my cousin, or not, damnit!"

There was silence after that, besides Harry's contained grunts of pain. Malfoy's eyes were no longer dilated and fuzzy, but sharp and clear again. And his voice was clear, also.

"WHAT?" he yelled, straining at his bonds. "You had better stop the practical joke _right now_, because that is NOT FUNNY!"

"OF COURSE IT'S NOT FUNNY!"Harry thundered. "WHY THE HELL WOULD I EVEN JOKE ABOUT THIS?!"

Even Malfoy had no answer to that. "Where's the proof?" he demanded.

Harry shoved the now re-folded picture in front of his nose. "This. That one in the red hair is my mother. The one in the blonde hair is your mother, if I remember correctly from last year's Quidditch cup. There's a trunk in my aunt's closet with the letter 'N' on it."

"That means nothing," Malfoy seethed, still pulling at the ropes that were chafing his skin. "It could all be a coincidence."

"One hell of a coincidence," Harry snapped. He leaned forward towards Malfoy, so close that their noses almost touched. "I would give my sanity to hear that this isn't true. But, it could be, and you know it." And, just to see the reaction, he added, "_Cousin._"

Malfoy winced, like Harry had slapped him. "Why are you telling me this?" he asked, giving up trying to pull at the ropes. "At least one of us could have kept our sanity."

Harry's lips curled into a sadistic grin. "Oh no. If I have to hit rock bottom, I'm dragging you down with me. In case you haven't noticed, I hate you just as much as you hate me." The sadistic grin widened. "You know what this means?"

"What now?"

"That you're related to a family of muggles."

"AM NOT!" Malfoy yelled, straining at his ropes again. "You have no proof," he said, breathing raggedly. "Just a lot of coincidence."

Harry turned around and came forward with a knife that was part of the supply closet. Malfoy instinctively flinched away.

"Calm down," Harry said, sliding the blade under a rope.

"Oh, please," Malfoy sneered, watching as the rope snapped. When Harry was done, he flexed his arms and legs, and snatched his satchel from the floor. Harry watched him warily as Malfoy opened the door, watching for a counterattack.

"Are you coming, Potter?" Malfoy sneered. Harry walked outside the classroom.

It was devoid of people, as class had started nearly ten minutes ago. Harry went to pick up his bag, which was dripping ink, as the Slytherins had pulverized it. Harry sighed and held it at arm length. Malfoy stood over him, waiting until Harry had finished gathering his ink-stained belongings.

"I'll ask my mother what her maiden name is," Malfoy said, gray eyes scanning. "That'll show you and your stupid picture. I'd as soon be related to a goat than to you."

"The feeling's mutual," Harry assured him, gathering his things and walking quickly in the opposite direction from Malfoy.

# # #

"Where were you?" demanded Hermione. "You're nearly a half hour late!"

Harry had a raging headache, and he massaged his throbbing temples. "I was detained by Snape."

"Figures," Ron said, adding soil to a Shimmerbush.

Harry started to prune a Flutterby bush, thinking. _Petunia, Lily, Narcissa. What a lovely flower garden. I hate my existence at times._

As if the Flutterby bush agreed, it shook violently as Harry gently teased away a brightly striped leaf.

# # # 


	3. Only the Moon

A/N: Okay, first thing's first. This story contains **slash**, that is, two characters of the same sex coming in contact with each other in more than a simple friendly manner. Now, it's not 'disgusting', NC-17 rated slash, but it is **slash** nonetheless, and if you flame me for it, I have no other response but to think of you as the hypocritical person you are, because I have warned you. (Granted, it's not my favorite kind of slash, but I didn't think that Draco/Harry would quite work with the storyline....::grins::)

Now that we've got that out of the way, I'll get on with the summary. This is a much shorter chapter than the other two, mostly dealing with Ron and Hermione's own scandals... Harry's not the only one. Please read and review... nicely!

Draco loved numbers. He loved how he could slice and dice them like vegetables under a chopping knife; mix them like martinis; bend them like soft rubber. And the answers always came out different, yet somehow the same. Clear-cut logic - no room for debate. Two times two is four: there's no way around it. The answer is right, or wrong. No middle ground, no confusion, no frustration.

He hated words for exactly the same reason. The world was under your control if you worded it right; it could become your enemy in a snap if you skipped a breath in a speech, slandered a stanza in poetry, botched a line in a play. The world was politics - Draco was no politician.

This was the reason he was easing out of bed at three forty two in the morning, aside the fact that it was so loud. Not in the room, of course, which housed about eight other softly snoring boys - no, rather, the noise was in his head.

It hadn't been a hard job to keep the Slytherin faithful from ganging up and knocking Harry's brains out his ears, though the group took it as an odd request. Draco amused himself at the thought as well - most of the time he'd have no qualms with the idea, especially after he had been viciously knocked to the floor... but this was different.

_Cousins_?

Draco's feet hit the cold wooden floor, and he winced out of his current state of mind. He sauntered over to the wastebasket and laboriously pulled out a crumpled bit of parchment with his long fingers. Uncrumpling it, he scanned over the contents.

__

Dear Mother,

How are you? I am...

This is where the letter had ended - he didn't know how to say he was. Fine? Tired? Sore? Apprehensive? Angry? He collapsed the paper into a vicious sphere again and threw it back into the wastepaper bin. Wrapping the folds of a black robe around his body, he carefully inched his way out of the room and into the Slytherin Common room.

It, of course, was deserted at this late hour, but still dimly lit by braziers in the background, casting shadowy light around the room. Draco walked around to the exit to the room, wanting to leave, but having no place to go, and not relishing the consequences of his unavoidable capture by Filch.

So instead he turned to the grayboard beside the exit of the dorms. It was a thin piece of wood, magicked to be smooth and a light, slick gray color, with a magical pen that hung on a frayed cord next to it. The board itself, of course, had been carved elaborately to match the Victorian elegance of the room, but it was empty of writing, since there were no announcements to be made at this hour.

"Give me the formula for the circumference of a circle," he abruptly asked the black pen. The pen wavered on its cord and rose in the air uncertainly, before writing:

__

Give me the area of the circumference of a circle.

Draco smirked. Stupid thing - he knew it would do that. So he plucked the pen from the side and started neatly drawing numbers over the grayboard. He went through quadratic equations, the areas of circles, squares, trapezoids, octagons, regular polygons, multiple algebraic problems before his mind went fuzzy from all of the work at such a late hour. Then he slowly started to scrawl out as many theorems and postulates as he could remember. Even though he would never admit it, if there were one muggle subject he would be willing to dabble in, it would have been mathematics.

It was sad, really, Draco thought as he wrote down the reflexive postulate of angles, that a person with such a brilliant mathematical mind could have so much trouble putting his thoughts in words.

# # #

Harry awoke the next morning with a throbbing headache. So, he promptly made for Hermione and asked for some headache pills - the school never supplied magical aid except for in dire situations, and Harry would have felt stupid asking for a magical cure for a headache.

Hermione brought down her medicine sack and started pulling out random bottles. "I don't think you'd be needing any Midol," she said thoughtfully, pushing aside a blue bottle.

Patil giggled. "Yes, Harry, we know that those cramps can be horrid, but..." she trailed off laughing. 

Red-eared, Harry accepted the white bottle of Advil and mustered out of the girl's dormitories as fast as he could. In the bathrooms he quickly popped three of the brown extra-strength pills, and let his head fall down into his hands, running them through his hair.

"Look, mate," Dean Thomas said, standing behind him, arms akimbo, "if you're not going to use the sink, move it."

Harry walked out of the way and back up to the boy's dormitories, where he slowly proceeded to pull on his clothes. Ron yawned loudly and sat up in bed. "Morning, Harry," he said sleepily, rolling out of his blankets.

"What hour do we have Potions today?" Harry asked, running his hands through his hair for lack of a brush.

"Never thought you'd be so eager to talk to Snape," Ron remarked, stretching. "It's a Green day. Fourth rotation, I do believe."

"Bloody hell," Harry muttered, wondering how he was going to get through the day. "I didn't do my Transfigurations homework," he added as a cover.

"Don't worry about it," Ron assured him, standing up. "Do it over lunch - though Hermione will surely pitch a good one. D'you have Quidditch tonight?"

Harry chewed his bottom lip in thought. "Don't think so. No, Alicia gave us the day off."

"Well, you had better get a move on," Ron proclaimed, leaving for the bathroom. "You play Slytherin in two weeks."

__

Too soon! Harry thought, watching Ron leave. _It's all happening too soon, all at once. Damnit._

# # #

The rest of the day passed in somewhat of a haze, as if the world was pushing its way through thick maple syrup. Then it was Potions class.

Harry entered with some trepidation, as indeed, most of the Slytherins were glaring at him for his assault on Malfoy yesterday. Yet Malfoy was looking at him directly in a contained sort of way, a way that said very clearly; _We need to talk._

Harry agreed with him, but didn't get the chance to before class, since he barely had time to slide into his seat before class started.

"Polyjuice potion today," Snape said in his icily abrupt way. Harry, Hermione and Ron shot each other sideways looks, making sure Snape couldn't see. "Pick your partners, and start adding the flaxweed. This potion takes over two weeks to concoct... so choose wisely."

Harry saw Ron looking at him, and was about to respond, when thin fingers clutched his forearm, and Harry found himself nose to nose with Malfoy. Ron appeared too flabbergasted to react.

"Come on, Potty," Malfoy said in a low voice, fingers tightening their grip on Harry's flesh. "I need a word or two with you."

Harry sighed and nodded rather reluctantly, before getting up and following the pale boy rather reluctantly. Ron's mouth dropped.

"Well," Hermione said, watching Harry animatedly talking to Malfoy, as the other boy hacked flaxweed, "that's certainly the oddest thing I've seen all day. Come on, Ron, we'll be partners."

Ron had gone red in the ears, and was welding the small chopping knife like a cleaver on the helpless plants. "_Malfoy_?" he sputtered, unable to make any other word form on his lips.

Hermione glanced at Malfoy, who was waving his arms in the air and talking furiously to Harry, who was looking amused. "I guess they needed to talk. It's not like they've become blood-brothers or something, so calm down."

Ron made an irate noise in his throat and lodged the blade in the soft table. Snape whirled around to snap at him with black eyes, so he dislodged the knife and added the flaxweed. "I can't believe he would do that!"

"Oh really?" asked Hermione shrewdly. "I get the idea that's what Harry would say if he knew about you and Cho."

Ron froze the chopped bits of leaves falling off his cutting board. Hermione calmly stooped down and started to shovel them into the cauldron. "What about me and Cho?" he asked defensively. "Harry doesn't even _like_..."

"Oh, cow putty," Hermione snapped. "He's had a major crush on her for about four years! Are you insane? Besides, if he _doesn't _like her, then why haven't you told him yet?"

Ron sealed his lips in a tight, angry line. "Because he doesn't have to know everything about me!" he shot back weakly.

Hermione smiled halfheartedly. "You just don't want to hurt his feelings," she pointed out. "You don't want him to know about you and Cho meeting at midnight in the bathrooms, about how you steal his invisibility cloak late at night to see the girl you know he likes..."

"Shut up!" Ron ordered, very red now. "I don't see how you know any of this, anyhow! What do you do, follow me around?"

Hermione picked up the ladle and started stirring the potion until it was a creamy pink. "I'm not daft. Girls know how to look for this sort of thing. You're not a good liar - you leak all over the place... in all senses of the word."

"You won't tell him, will you?" Ron asked humbly, weaving his fingers together.

"No, but you'll have to tell him eventually or cut it off with Cho," Hermione said, sitting down. "You don't want him to find out on his own, that you've been snogging..."

"Shut up!"

"...with his crush."

# # #

"What do you _mean_, you haven't sent the letter yet?!" Harry yelled, forgetting completely about the potion, which was about to froth over the sides of the cauldron.

"Chill out, Potter!" Malfoy shot back, hands clenching into fists. "It's been a _day_! What am I supposed to write about, anyhow? 'Dear Mother, I just have to know, am I related to Harry Potter?'"

"She's _your_ mother!" Harry shrieked, stamping a foot. "I don't know what you should write, but do it soon, so we can both get back to our sanities!"

There was silence between them after that. Another second of staring, and then both of them started busily fixing their botched potion before it started overflowing.

"It can't be true," Malfoy panted, wiping sweat off his brow from the fire. He squatted and changed the temperature with his wand. "I would have been told if I had any cousins."

"Oh yeah, and I'm sure that Lucius Malfoy would readily admit that he was related by marriage to Harry Potter," Harry sneered, the heat and Malfoy making him cross.

Malfoy turned from the fire and looked up at him. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked in a low voice. "My father was cleared of all charges associated with the Dark Side, so you can drop that little theory right there..."

Harry squatted by Malfoy, so they were both hidden behind the large cauldron. "I don't care what the authorities say," he said quietly, though he wanted to scream it. "Last year, I _saw_ your father there..."

The next thing Harry knew was a sharp pain in the back of his head, and a sound like a gong going off. Malfoy had his fingers coiled around Harry's neck, slamming him against the large pewter cauldron. "Listen here," Malfoy seethed raggedly, tightening his grip, "you little shit..."

Blinding pain on his backside. Harry screamed and flung himself from Malfoy's grip, leaping up. 

"Potter, stop!" Malfoy's voice, distant. "You're making it worse!"

Wetness, then black.

# # #

Nighttime had fallen again when Ron rose from his bed, creeping quietly over to Harry's trunk and unlatching it. Under the pile of dirty robes there was a heap of iridescent fabric, which he slid over his shoulders and stole out of his dormitory with.

Making his way through the hallways was easier at night under the aid of the invisibility cloak than it was in the middle of the day. No people, no problems. Mrs. Norris was there, of course, but Ron passed the cat by without a thought. Mrs. Norris sniffed the air, but since she couldn't see anything, turned her lamplike eyes elsewhere.

Ron trotted up five sets of stairs and through a hallway. He was tired, and had to slow down for the sixth set of stairs. He had spent the rest of the day with Harry in the infirmary, Harry who had very bad burns on his back from getting carelessly close to the cauldron flames. Ron grunted. Malfoy had to have had a hand in Harry getting 'too close', since Harry was never so clumsy.

Ron was the clumsy one, both in physical and emotional actions. Here he was, sneaking out in the middle of the night in his injured best friend's cloak to see his best friend's crush and steal his best friend's kisses and touches and handholding and love.

Faithful Ron Weasley?

_Nothing is faithful in the end_, Ron thought savagely, taking off the cloak at the top of the eighth stair. Remorse? Of course. Regret? No.

Pushing open the door to the Astronomy deck produced a brilliant, metallic-tiled room with a glass domed ceiling that opened the view to the heavens, which were alight and sparkling with pricks of light called stars, and the globe of the moon cast bright silvery light to cascade off the tiles.

While painfully bright and garish in the daytime, those metallic, mirror-tiles gleamed like shining silver in the nighttime.

Beautiful as it was, the most beautiful thing to Ron was the person in the center of the circular room, Cho. She was sitting, staring at the stars, her knees hugged to her chest in little-girl fashion. Her dark hair was brushing her earlobes, and Ron had never seen anything so innocent and erotic at the same time.

"Hello, Ron."

"Hi, Cho."

Ron slid next to the girl on the floor and craned his neck to the heavens with her. After a few moments contemplative silence, Cho spoke. "So, how's Harry? I heard he's in the infirmary."

Ron grunted as he squinted at a red star. "If he'd stay away from Malfoy, he'd be all right."

Cho whirled her head around, black eyes wide. "You don't mean...!"

Ron shook his head vigorously. "No! No, Harry's as straight as you or me. I mean, they've been talking a lot lately, and Malfoy shoved him into the fires in Potions."

Cho shrugged, her hair cascading over her shoulders, as she looked back skywards. "Well, you never know, I suppose. Sometimes hatred can change to love."

Ron shivered. "Please, the thought of Harry and Malfoy together is more than I can stomach. No, I don't think it's about that... not if they're maiming each other constantly. Harry decked Malfoy the other day, Malfoy shoves him into fire..."

"Still." Cho's eyes glinted evilly. "Some like it rough."

"You!" Ron sighed, exasperated. He took a gentle finger and tilted Cho's head down, the fingertip carefully outlining Cho's lips, her cheeks, her eyes, before leaning forward and planting a kiss on her soft pink lips, tinted silvery by the moonlight.

Sighing into his mouth, Cho let a hand tangle up in the red shock of hair, tilting the head back, savoring the scent of the shampoo that came off of Ron in waves from the assault. 

The kiss became deeper and more passionate, almost bruising, before they had to let go and come up for gulps of air. Cho scrabbled up off of the shiny tiles and leaned forward onto Ron, letting him take her body weight as she eased him back into a lying position, covering his face and neck with butterfly kisses, light and sweeping over the skin.

Ron moaned and put his hands on her hips, letting her mouth do the expressions and talking. Pricks of guilt washed through him, but they weren't enough to make him want to give this up.

Not after so long.

Sometimes the nights were wild and passionate - they never did anything that would be considered blatantly immoral, partially because Cho was reserving herself for marriage, mostly because they were only fifteen, partially because they weren't about to try anything on the floor in the astronomy tower.

Sometimes the nights were soothing and calming, like this was. The nights when the kisses and touching didn't matter so much, but simple body contact, like holding hands, was all they needed for fulfillment. Cho had a wonderful singing voice, and she displayed her talents often for Ron, and Ron liked to share of his adventures with Harry, his brother's new prank, a lewd joke or two he had learned from the twins.

"You had better go," Cho whispered, her head leaning against his chest. "You don't want the others to know where you've gone."

Ron nodded rather reluctantly, his fingers distangeling from her hair. He stood up, exhausted and sated. "Tomorrow?"

Cho smiled. "Like always." She turned her head back towards the heavens. Ron left. He always left before she did - the Ravenclaw dormitories were very, very close to the Astronomy Tower, so she always left after.

Cho was left alone in the tower for a grand total of two seconds, before she called out again. "Hermione, come on."

Hermione came to the center of the room. Daybreak was coming, as betrayed by the shimmering lines of gold that streaked the sky. "I must say that that was an interesting show."

Cho rolled her eyes and patted the tiles beside her. "It was nothing. Besides, I thought we agreed at the beginning of this that we weren't going to be faithful, anyway."

Hermione took the seat and leaned her head against the other girl's shoulder. Cho wrapped an arm around Hermione's waist, drawing her closer. "You know that Harry likes you."

"I know."

"Then why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"Cheating on his best friend to go out with his _other _best friend?"

Cho sighed and snuggled closer to the other girl. "You know I prefer girls."

"Yes, you've told me that several times. But why Ron, not Harry?"

Cho sighed again and nibbled on Hermione's ear lobe. "Because do you know how many girls would go with Harry if he asked them? Half of the school, even the Slytherins would go. Not many go for his sidekick."

"But he wants _you_."

"Let's just say I have a thing for guys with red hair."

"Even Percy Weasley?"

"Ugh."

They both shared a giggle at this, but the giggle was soon replaced with Cho's lips on Hermione's in a deep kiss, deeper than the one Ron shared with Cho earlier. Cho pushed her tongue past Hermione's lips into her mouth, and Hermione moaned in submission at the entrance.

Hermione didn't know how she had gotten herself into this - it just sort of happened on the fly, one day after a Ravenclaw Quidditch practice. Cho was a very passionate woman, and Hermione was an intellect, smarter than the entire Ravenclaw house. They clicked. Cho was something of a bisexual, though she had admitted to Hermione several times that she was leaning in the direction of women.

Hermione wasn't sure. She never was. Though the passion was good for her, she wasn't sure what she wanted. She was sure that she didn't really want Cho - Cho, for all of her attractiveness and charm, was dishonest; she was being dishonest with Ron as they kissed. Every touch, every brush, every wild look was a double slash against Ron and Harry both.

Though she couldn't help it. Cho was addicted to love, as Ron and Hermione were addicted to her physically, while Harry swooned and was addicted to her in nocturnal fantasies. 

_Everything is so messed up_, Hermione thought in resignation as Cho licked curiously at the tip of her nose.

"But soft!" Cho said, looking at the rising sun. "What light through yonder window breaks?"

"It is the East," Hermione said quietly. "And Cho is the sun."

Cho grinned, hauling Hermione to her feet and twirling her around. "Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is sick and pale with grief that thou art her maid, and thou art more fair than she!"

_Yeah,_ Hermione thought quietly. _That's me, the moon. Only the moon._


	4. Goodbye, Goodnight

A/N: This'll be quick. 

Summary: Why is everything suddenly a lie? 

Review: Yes, please. 

Sane: No. 

Too much fun with color and font: Yes. Oh, yes. ^_~

Enjoy: Yes. Please do.

Special thanks to: My Beta-Reader Beth Brownell, My Inspiration Sierra (yes, part of the plot here was her idea), and my Sounding Board Virgo, who helped me make everything make sense. Yes, this actually makes some form of sense, somehow. ^_^ 

# # #

A flower for your vanity

A penny for your thoughts,

About the world's insanity

And how we've gotten lost.

Strike up the band and play a song as we go waltzing by,

And fake a smile as we all say goodbye.

Goodbye... Goodbye...

Say a prayer for recognition, 

Kiss the ones you love.

Gather up the ammunition,

Sigh for all the lost.

Strike up the band and play a song as we go waltzing by,

And fake a smile as we all say goodbye...

Goodbye... Goodbye...

# # #

The moon glittered in radiant waves through the ebony sky, which trickled down through Harry's infirmary window onto his bed. The light was thin and weak, however, and he didn't wake.

No, the thing that woke him was a vibration sending shockwaves through his arm and up to his brain.

"Potter!" A voice sliced through the glimmering silence to torture his eardrums. "Potter, wake up!"

"Malfoy, I swear to God," Harry said, heaving himself up on his elbows. "How did you get into the Gryffindor..."

It took little more than a second to realize that he, was not, technically, in the Gryffindor dorms. He was in a place that had nearly become a second home for him - the infirmary. Malfoy was sitting at the foot of his bed, wrapped in a stark blue satin nightrobe, looking at him through a pair of sleep-calmed eyes.

It was then the Potion incident of earlier caught up with Harry. He had to shut his eyes as boiling red anger swept through him, but he quickly let it ebb, as it made his head throb. His elbows gave in from under him and he flopped back onto his white bed. "It's the middle of the night," he said instead. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Malfoy held his pale hand up to the moonlight and rubbed his index finger, like he was inspecting it for flaw. "It's not like I could come and see you during visiting hours," he drawled.

Harry breathed deeply before answering. "Why are you here at all?" Without waiting for an answer, he plunged on to the next inquiry, "What did you do to me?"

"You got too close to the fire in the Potions room," Malfoy said, turning his head so the moonlight illuminated the back of his head like tinsel. "Your robes caught on fire."

"For what it's worth," Harry said, still laying down, "your father is a Death Eater, no matter what you say."

There was a creak and a depression of the bed lifted as Malfoy got up. "I know," he replied, walking beside Harry's headboard and twisting a few knobs. Harry made a frantic effort to leap out of the bed, but he was retracted by the pain on his back. He fell backwards, but was pushed to a sitting position, because Malfoy was raising the back of the bed. "There's just no reason for me to admit it in front of the rest of Hogwarts."

Dazed, partway because of all the blood that was washing away from his head from being in a lying position for so long, Harry looked at the other boy. "That was easy," he remarked. "I somehow expected a long, involved argument."

Malfoy raised his eyebrows. "Look," he said pointedly, "can I just get back to what I want to say here?"

"I'm not stopping you."

Malfoy dragged over a stool and took out a piece of folded parchment, a small vial of ink, and a very folded, squashed quill, all three of which he handed to Harry. "Then you can write my mother a letter."

"What?!"

To Harry's surprise, Malfoy flushed a light shade of pink. "Just do it, Potter."

Harry made the means to dip into the ink and pretended to write on the paper. "Dear Mum," he read in a high, drawling voice, "I have just wrote to tell you I've come upon the idea that I'm the biggest prat in the known universe (and probably the unknown too), that I had to wake up my archival (who was injured and sleeping in the infirmary, no less), to write you a letter."

Spidery hands gripped him by his hair and yanked his head back, exposing the pale, venerable skin there. "Do you know how easy it would be," Malfoy's strained voice informed him, "to take this quill-" there was a sharp pressure just above Harry's Adam's apple "-and just _press_?"

"And do you know how easy it would be to go to Azkaban for the rest of your life for doing that?" Harry asked, sounding braver than he felt.

The hands released, and Harry massaged his neck, while Malfoy threw the quill at him. It bounced harmlessly off his chest and landed in his lap. "No dementor could drive me as insane as you," he sneered, resting his hands on his thighs, hooking his ankles around the rungs of the stool. "I need you to write it because I have no idea what to say."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, placing the writing materials on the nightstand.

"What do I write? 'Dear Mother, I just need to know, am I related to the Boy Who Lived?"

Harry winced at the bite Malfoy said his epithet with. "I hadn't thought about that."

"_Obviously_," Malfoy muttered, rubbing his mussed hair back with a hand.

"What if we said it was for a project?" asked Harry, picking at his chin thoughtfully. "What are your electives?"

"Advanced Potions, Theory of Magic, Arithmancy."

"_Theory of Magic_?" Harry asked, appalled. "With Professor Binns?"

"The very same."

"Now I see why you're so messed up. I can't believe you willingly signed up to be tortured like that. That's one of the two classes even Hermione refuses to take!"

"Thanks Potter," Malfoy drawled sarcastically. "And if you must know, Father insisted on it. And what the mudblood takes has no effect on me, thank you."

In one fluid motion, Harry had taken the vial of ink, tore off the top, and flung the contents at Malfoy, who was now covered in blue ink. "_Never_," he said tersely, "_ever_ call Hermione that in my presence. She is worth about fifty of you, for your information."

Malfoy didn't respond, instead launched himself at Harry, knocking him hard in the gut, driving him back into the soft mattress. Harry gasped for breath, then threw Malfoy back against the metal bedframe, which hit his skull with a loud clang, making the bed retract into the lying position.

The doorknob to the infirmary twisted; the mechanisms for the door creaked.

"Damn!" Harry cried, dropping his grip on Malfoy's left ankle and instead shoved him under the blankets.

"What the hell?!" Malfoy's voice demanded, muffled by the mattress as Harry pushed him further down. "Don't you even _think_ about trying anything, Potter!"

"Shut your trap!" Harry said in a snippy voice. "Somebody's coming, just shut the hell up!"

"Harry?" asked Madam Pomfrey, poking her head in the door. Harry instantly pretended to be asleep, and he felt Malfoy tense under the blankets, curling into a ball.

"Uhh?" Harry asked, from his lying position. He knew that he didn't look convincing at all - he was covered in blue from his sparring with Malfoy - but he hoped she attuned it to nighttime shadows. He blearily hauled himself to a sitting position. "What's going on?"

"I heard some noise... is anybody in here with you?"

Harry felt hands lock around his ankle. Harry could easily say yes. Disturbing a person in the infirmary at nighttime - even more so, _fighting _with a person in the infirmary - was grounds for questionless expulsion. The hands tightened when Harry didn't give an immediate 'no'.

"I was dreaming," Harry said, shrugging. "I might have been moving around... why?"

"Huh," Madam Pomfrey said in a skeptical voice. Harry saw the glimmer of a candle behind the billow of nightrobes, and Harry prayed that she wouldn't come in. "Well, I don't know... do you need anything?"

"No, I'd like to sleep, though, if it's not too bothersome."

"Of course not. Good night, Harry."

"Night, Madam Pomfrey."

The door closed, and Malfoy's hands left Harry's ankles. Malfoy stayed where he was for a moment, making sure that the nurse wasn't coming back, before popping his head out from underneath the covers. He was drenched in sweat, and gasping in gulps of air.

"God, it's hot as hell under there," he said.

"Yes, and that would explain why you're shaking still," Harry said sourly, looking down at his white hospital gown, which was covered in blue ink.

"Shut up," Malfoy replied, taking deep, calming breaths.

Harry rolled out of the bed, landing on shaky knees, and feeling bolts of pain shoot through his back. "Thank you, Potter," he said in the high, drawling voice again, "for not expelling me."

"I don't sound like that." Malfoy rolled out of bed too, his blue satin nightrobe stained with darker blue spots. "Shit. You _had _to throw the ink, didn't you? You couldn't have just attempted to punch me or something." He looked up and pulled off the robe, revealing a pair of nightpants, which were also stained. Making a face, Malfoy looked at the skin on his chest, which also had traces of blue. "God damn it to hell."

"You have a very nasty mouth," Harry yawned, stripping the bed of its white-stained-blue sheets. "I think Pomfrey has cleaning solutions."

Malfoy balled up his nightrobe. "What were you saying about my electives?"

Harry dumped the bedding into a clean bedpan and opened a cupboard, wincing as it hurt to reach so far up. "You could say you were doing a project on your family tree, and you needed information from your mother's side of the family. Can you reach that green jar? Yeah, that one."

"It looks like honey," Malfoy commented, prying the top off of the jar. He handed the jar to Harry, who read it. It was labeled 'Cloth Cleaning Carryon'. Harry dumped half of it onto the clothing, as Malfoy tossed his nightrobe in. "But what if she doesn't want to give it, or doesn't give real information? If she doesn't want me to know, she's not going to let me."

Harry scrubbed at a spot on the pillowcase. "I assume you haven't told your family about this idea of yours. I'm not doing all the scrubbing you know, I think you can afford to get your pristine hands dirty."

"Rot in hell," Malfoy said conversationally, picking up his robe and rubbing at a spot. "No, I haven't."

"Well, she's probably not going to think that you're working with me on this," Harry said. 

"I know your mother's name is Lily. Maybe she won't want me to make the connection."

Harry sighed and picked up the now-clean sheets, as the cleaning solution had sunk into it. "There's going to be spots on the mattress, but there's not much we can do about that - I don't want Pomfrey noticing too much of her cleaning stuff gone." He looked at Malfoy. "I have an aunt named Petunia. I don't think she'd count on you knowing that. Besides, there are probably other people in this world named Lily." He sighed. "Look, it's late, and that's the best I can come up with."

Malfoy put on his cleaned robe and sighed. "All right, I'll try... though I'm not promising anything."

And with that he left. Harry wearily watch the door slide shut behind him, and then lock itself, like all of the other doors in the school. Slowly he re-made his bed, before drawing the curtains shut, so the moon's shiny eye wouldn't keep him awake by gazing on him. The last thought Harry had before he slept was if he had remembered to do his Divination homework.

# # #

It didn't take Harry long to get out of the infirmary. Of course, all of the Gryffindors pounced on him immediately, asking if Malfoy had really pushed him in the fire. Naturally, outside of his house, Malfoy was not a very popular person, and therefore this was prime chance to throw him in detention for a month or two, and perhaps even get entertained by a Howler from Lucius Malfoy.

To their great disappointment, however, Harry denied all of the charges against Malfoy. I tripped over my own feet, my bookbag was in the way, I ran into the table and fell over it, and so on. This constant denial was driving Ron up the walls.

"What are you trying to do, covering for Malfoy?!" Ron finally yelled in exasperation. "Are you his best friend, or something now?"

"I think you're overreacting a bit," Hermione observed calmly, looking up from her parchment. A three-scroll parchment was due on the many uses of belladonna root aside from poison next hour, and Hermione already had filled two and a half scrolls with tiny, pristine script. She peered over the table at Harry's. "I suggest you finish your essay, unless you want to get detention from Snape."

Ron was filling his second sheet of parchment with sloppy, angry, scrawling handwriting, slanting all over the page and varying in size. "What does it matter?" asked Ron angrily, "He's spending all of his time with the Slytherin peanut gallery anyhow!"

"Ron, I fell over!" Harry cried, shaking his quill emotionally, splattering black ink all over Hermione's essay. "Malfoy had _nothing _to do with it!"

This was, of course, a lie, and Ron knew it.

"Like he would cover for you! What is the _matter_ with you?"

Harry was spared from answering when the late bell rang. Cursing and spluttering, the threesome gathered their things in armfuls and sprinted down the many staircases and ramps to the dungeons. Oh, they were in for it now... Snape was going to have a field day with this...

Malfoy was waiting for them at the entry of the Potion room. He was leaning up against the large doorframe, chewing on a sprig of flaxweed, the long green stalk rotating as his teeth crunched down on it. 

"What do you want, Malfoy?" spat Ron, clutching a leaking quill pen to his chest. Malfoy pulled the blade farther into his mouth, chewing it reflectively for a moment.

"Come on," he said, stepping in the doorframe. Harry looked at the other two, shrugged, and followed. Hermione followed Harry, and Ron, still dripping ink and anger, followed last.

Malfoy lead the three right past Snape, by the Gryffindor side of the room, his hands in his pockets and still chewing the flaxweed. Ron and Hermione discreetly slid into their seats, and Malfoy pushed Harry down into a stool next to him, folding his hands on the desk angelically.

Snape said nothing to them, only looked slightly infuriated when he didn't mark them all tardy.

Both the Gryffindor and Slytherin sides of the room were utterly surprised and appalled by this strange turn of rivalry. First, Malfoy keeps the Slytherin posse from ganging up on Harry, then Harry covers for Malfoy when Malfoy _obviously_ pushes him into the fire, and _now_ Malfoy saves his three archrivals from months of possibly humiliating detention.

_What the hell?_ was the general consensus.

But there wasn't much time for talk, as Snape soon put them to work on their Polyjuice potions. Harry sat down and started pulling antennae off of the luna moths.

"Thanks," Harry said awkwardly, as Malfoy tugged the lid off of their simmering cauldron, the contents of which were an off shade of brown.

"Do we have any more lacewings?" asked Malfoy, dismissing the gratitude. "We don't have enough in here."

"Did you write the letter?" asked Harry, handing over the paper bag, which had held the bugs. It was empty. 

Malfoy nodded his head towards the student supply cabinet, and they both walked off, heads close together in conference.

"I think they've gotten knocked with Bludgers too many times," commented Ron, fuming as he sloshed the potion around violently with his stirrer.

"I don't know _what's _going on," said Blaise Zambini, who was working with Neville on account of they were the last two people without partners. Blaise could actually be a reasonable person at times, though she held deep resentment for Lavender Brown. "Those two are normally at each other's throats."

The Gryffindors murmured agreement, before bending over their potions when Snape swooped around the room.

"So, when should I send it?" asked Malfoy, who held the sealed letter in his hand. Harry rummaged idly through the back of the counter, making himself look busy.

"I wish you hadn't sealed it," Harry muttered. 

"Just because you saved me from being expelled doesn't mean that you can read my post," Malfoy pointed out, pushing the letter back in his pocket. "But I told you the gist." He looked at Harry squarely. "Just to prove you're very, very wrong."

Harry shook his head and sighed, pulling out a handful of dried lacewings. "Believe me, I would hate being right."

# # #

Musical notes ran rampant over the page like tiny little ants. Narcissa was reminded fondly when she and some of her friends would get together and play out a few tunes, just for the sheer fun of eating chocolate ice cream by the pound, joking and talking. Then, with sudden intensity, they would dig into the strings, rosin dust flying in the air, and ream out some of the most beautiful music in the world - or so they were concerned. They even composed some songs. They were going to be famous.

Then Louise moved to America, Tamara got married and couldn't play anymore, and Susan was killed in the uprising of Voldemort. Narcissa hadn't heard from the former two in years. She was pretty sure she was the only one still actually playing, though she didn't know why.

"E flat minor," she muttered to herself, running her splendid long fingers over the notes, and tugging on the strings of her cello. They were in perfect tune, the wood polished and shiny, from her own care. She would never let any of the house elves take care of her instrument - it didn't matter. Her cello - named Chip for the slight imperfection in the side - was the only thing that was truly hers.

She was about to start the first chord, when an owl swerved in the open window, and landed on the music stand, shattering her concentration.

Pursing her lips, she took the letter, and scanned it. It was from Draco, important enough for her to place Chip on its side and devote her attention away from the music for a moment. 

Mother -

Hogwarts is so dreadfully boring, I'm sorry to say. Nothing really new to report on anything - you may as well inform Father of that as well, nothing of interest to him or his Death Eaters. No sign of Voldemort, and Harry Potter is proving as impossible as ever. 

Anyway, I wrote to inform you of the incredibly boring Professor Binns's assignment I have to do for Theory of Magic class. (Remind me to give Father an earful next time I see him for insisting I take that boring class. Actually, keep that remark to yourself. I'd rather him not read that.)

I have to have information on my mother's side of the family for a family tree project, or some other rot. I've never really asked you much about your past, and it's rather embarrassing that I had to ask for an extension on the project because I didn't know anything about your past. Here's a copy of the rubric:

Is he/she a muggle born?

Is anybody on her side of the family a squib?

Did she go to Hogwarts? Did she finish her education?

What house was she in, if yes? If no, where did she go for education?

Did her siblings (if any) go to Hogwarts? If yes, how many attended, and what houses?

What was her maiden name?

Thank you, Mother.

Sincerely yours,

__

Draco

"Is it from Draco?" Lucius Malfoy asked, walking into the room, cocking his head in interest.

"No," Narcissa said, crumpling the letter up and sighing. "It's from Rene, asking if I'd like to go over for dinner tonight." She rubbed her forehead dramatically, careful of her eyeliner. "I don't think that I'd like to go. I've got a headache."

"Could be because you play with _this _thing all day," Lucius commented, sitting down and picking up the cello with the wrong hand.

Narcissa smiled and walked behind her husband, leaning over and gently switching the hand he held the cello with. "I do it to annoy you."

"Anyway," Lucius said, setting the instrument down and sighing, "I'm going out on business for the Ministry."

"For how long?"

"Three days. I'm leaving after dinner."

"All right. Anything you'd like me to take care of while you're gone?"

"Not a thing." Lucius heaved out of the chair and kissed his wife on the cheek. "You just stay here and be your lovely self."

"Flatterer," accused Narcissa as he walked out of the room. When he had left, Narcissa quickly turned around and tossed the letter from her son into the flames.

Contrary to what most people thought, Lucius was not the hard person he appeared to be at home. True, his manners with other people left something to be desired, and he was as stubborn as a pig, but he always was loving to her.

As long as she didn't make him angry, that was.

He had only hit her once, and that was in a drunken rage, and he kept on calling her 'Pansy', and then afterwards dissolved into a puddle of hot tears, asking 'Pansy' why she let him do this, and what was his father going to say?

It was strange, really. She felt so sorry for him that she sat up with him all night until the house elves _finally_ found the recipe for a sobering potion, that took Narcissa and three house elves to get him to drink. Then he fell asleep, and didn't wake up for three days.

Strange, strange, strange.

_What skeletons do we have hiding in our closets?_ wondered Narcissa, taking out a sheet of parchment and wetting the tip of a quill. She had to tell him someday. Well, she could tell him half of it. The other half would break his heart, and she and Lucius had vowed never to tell him, anyhow.

# # #

One day passed. Then two, then three, then four, and then Harry decided he needed to find other ways to occupy his time rather than scanning the skies constantly for Malfoy's mother's reply. He would go insane otherwise.

The third Quidditch match was to take place on the fifth day of waiting, and Harry wasn't too sure if he could cope with anything competitive. Battling off a headache and a sick, albeit giddy feeling.

If it was true that he was related to Malfoy, then that meant that he had other relatives. After the last few years with the Dursleys, he found that he was willing to do _anything_ to get out of there for the long summer months. Perhaps Narcissa would be nice, he thought with sick hope. Then he shook his head.

_What is the matter with me? I'm not related to Malfoy!_ he thought as he gently rubbed the fourteenth coat of polish into his broom. Finally, Fred Weasley grabbed it away.

"You're going to slip off of it if you polish it any more," he chided. "We're considering an assault on Snape tomorrow - want to join, yes?"

Harry screwed the top back onto the jar of broom polish. "Not especially," he said, getting up. Fred grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back in the chair rather forcefully.

"What's wrong?" asked Fred, holding the broomstick in his lap. "You haven't been yourself lately. Everybody's worried about you. Are you sick, or something?"

Harry muttered incoherently. Fred shook his shoulder.

"Seriously, Harry."

"That's a new attitude for you," Harry snapped, pulling out of his grip. "How does it fit? Do you prefer it or the red version?"

Fred watched with a bemused look as Harry strode angrily out of the common room. Ron popped out of the boy's dormitory, hands on hips.

"I told you so," Ron said, motioning towards the door that Harry had just stormed out of. "Something's funny."

Fred, who still had Harry's broomstick, shrugged. "Maybe he knows about you and Cho," he said blandly.

Ron's brown eyes widened to the size of dinner platters, and he had to stomp his foot to get any words to come out of his mouth. "_How _does everybody _know_ about that?" he demanded angrily. "_My _life is my life, and nobody else's business!"

Fred watched him, amused, before jerking his thumb in the direction of the portrait hole, which Harry left through. "Well, did you ever consider that his life is his life, and nobody else's business?"

"This is _different_. He's becoming weird!"

"He'll become even weirder when he finds out that you're going with Cho," Fred commented, standing up and stretching, still holding the broomstick. 'Have you seen George around? We need to go to Hogsmeade for dungbombs and fireworks. Care to come?"

"There's a match in a half hour," Ron reminded him. "I'm going to that. And no, I haven't seen George since breakfast."

"That's right," Fred said, about the match. "He's probably out at the field - better have saved me my broom... or I'll just have to use _this_ beauty." He twirled Harry's broom like a baton. "Gryffindor-Slytherin, right?"

"Unless Harry and Malfoy decide to go have tea together and discuss things, then yes," Ron snapped.

# # #

It wasn't until the dark green cloud of uniforms flooded the Quidditch field did Harry realize whom he was going to be up against. His heart sank to his feet.

"Okay," said George, who had several little flying Quidditch players hovering over a tiny Quidditch field. "We're going to play tri-star this game." The flying figures swerved around each other in a three-star shape.

Harry really didn't have to listen, so he didn't. Strategies were for the Beaters and the Chasers on scoring points and defending. They had nothing to do with the Seeker, unless they needed him to bounce a Bludger off of. That actually was part of one of the strategies, a rather painful one dubbed galactic. 

"Good luck," Katie Bell said, clapping Harry on the shoulder. Alicia Spinnet knocked him on the back in a friendly manner, and Angelina Johnson punched his glasses off his face accidentally. It was the custom of the three Chasers to give Harry a half-hearted beating before they resumed their position.

Harry saw Malfoy's thin body near the back of the Slytherin lineup, his silver-blonde hair flying around his head like a halo as he looked intently at the sky. Harry's lips turned up into a smile - he wasn't looking for the Snitch - he was looking for his mother's reply.

The whistle blew, and the four balls were let out of their respective cages, the quaffle flying straight into the arms of a Slytherin Chaser, and the two Bludgers flew straight at George Weasley, who batted them away towards the Chaser.

The Snitch zipped quickly out of sight. Harry dipped around sleepily in a haze, gazing upwards in an attempt to look for the Snitch.

"HARRY LOOK OUT!" bellowed Angelina. After this belated remark, a Bludger knocked Harry solidly in the side. Luckily, he knew how to deal with being hit so he wouldn't get broken bones.

Throwing his weight to the side, he barrelrolled over the broom, rolling with the blow. It still hurt, though there was definitely nothing broken. Harry resolved to pay better attention.

The Snitch twinkled into sight. Harry peeled away after it, and saw Malfoy with his arms outstretched coming from the opposite direction.

Slytherin was ahead, he knew that. Instead of grabbing the Snitch too early, Harry balled his hands into fists, preparing to ram into Malfoy to keep him from getting the one hundred and fifty points so soon.

The crowd roared with anticipation. Then, just before contact, Malfoy swerved upwards. The snitch hovered three feet in front of Harry's nose. The entire crowd fell silent. What was _that_?

Gryffindor scored twenty points in a row. The snitch was still hovering in front of Harry's hand. He could easily take it now and count it as a victory. But it somehow didn't seem very sporting, with Malfoy not trying to sabotage him and all.

He had about five seconds before the snitch would zip away. Then he saw Malfoy's figure chasing, Seeker-style, after a large brown owl.

Forgetting the snitch, Harry pelted after Malfoy. To everybody's utter surprise, the snitch followed _after_ Harry, hovering around his ears. Harry actually had to bat it away a few times - it was annoying him.

Malfoy had torn the letter from the owl's talons in suspense, so hard that it tore the parchment. His eyes contracted into slits as he read it, fingers trembling as they stroked down the paper. Then he blanched, leaned over the side of his broom, and vomited.

"What does it say?" asked Harry frantically, scrabbling for the paper Malfoy held in his left hand. "What does it say?"

He had a pretty good idea, however. While Malfoy was otherwise occupied by heaving over the side of his broom, Harry snatched the paper and read the contents fearfully.

Draco - 

I'm surprised you hadn't asked before. I have two sisters, Petunia and Lily. My maiden name was White. I was a Ravenclaw, though my sisters' last name was Evans. Lily was a Gryffindor. Petunia is a muggle, and Lily is deceased.

And if you haven't figured it out yet, then Professor Binns has made you duller than you can ever imagine.

And don't think you can outsmart your mother - she's who gave you your brains, dearest. You've been talking to that Potter character, haven't you? Darling, write me back if there is any confusion.

Love in the highest regard,

Mother

No. No. No. No.

The thoughts bounced around his brain like -

No..

- a broken record player. It wasn't true. It couldn't be -

No. No. No. No.

- it just wasn't possible. But there it was, as plain as -

No.

- day. And Narcissa _knew_ about it all along? But - 

No. No. No.

- why didn't she tell Draco, at least? Draco who was her - 

No. No.

- son?

No.

The thoughts of reason and inquisition were caught in the tangled shards of denial as the world spun. Harry had to hold onto his broom to avoid falling off. Malfoy was still hanging over the side of his broom, though he had been reduced to dry retching by now. Cousins?

NO!

The snitch was still hovering curiously around his earlobes, a tiny golden spark flitting around the edges of his glasses. Harry swatted at it again.

A crazy black finger knifed into his face, pointing at his nose. Malfoy, who looked utterly insane, foaming at the mouth and watery eyes screamed at him.

"You are not related to me!" he cried crazily, flecks of spit flying from his mouth. "I - I don't care what you... it's NOT TRUE!"

He went hurtling towards the forbidden forest, and Harry watched him, frozen, crash into the leafy growth somewhere in the middle of it. Harry's eyes began to hurt, so he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

The snitch, impatient, landed smack in his palm. Harry's fingers closed over it, still rubbing his eyes.

He had forgotten the game in his confusion. Alicia Spinnet flew alongside him, looking concerned and quite confused. "Harry?" she asked.

Harry flashed the winged sphere in her face. "I caught the snitch," he announced.

Then the headache caught up to him, and he fainted, falling off the broom and towards the ground.

# # # 

Raise a glass for ignorance,

Drink a toast to fear.

The beginning of the end has come, 

That's why we all are here.

Strike up the band and play a song as we go marching by,

And fake a smile as we all say goodbye...

Goodbye... Goodbye...

~Jars of Clay, 'Goodbye, Goodnight'


	5. Oh, the Scandal!

Okay, look. I need you to bend with me here for these two chapters. Here is where you get to the heart of the scandal - it only gets worse from here. Throws muse in jail for: Breaking canon, underage drinking, sex, evil Lucius doing mean things to baby Draco, and altogether weirdness. Redeeming value: Well, I think it's interesting.

Please review. I know it's weird and out of canon and seriously out there, but if you must flame, go right ahead. It's cold here in Michigan.

# # #

It was night once again when Harry awoke in the infirmary. Night filtered in through the windows; seeped through the floorboards and wrapped its long tentacles around Harry's neck until Harry was sure had had been smothered and sat bolt upright.

Instantly happening with him sitting up, the door opened and a prick of candlelight killed the darkness and illuminated Professor Dumbledore's face. Too exhausted to deal with this properly, Harry collapsed back onto the bed.

"How did you sleep, Harry?" asked Professor Dumbledore, managing to look friendly but also grave at the same time. This doubleplay of emotions confused Harry so that he shut his eyes.

"Fine, sir."

There was a skittering of rapidly brisk footsteps and a wind of slight perfume where Madam Pomfrey swished down upon a chair like a hawk on prey, and started to take Harry's pulse.

"Nasty game, Quidditch," Madam Pomfrey tisked, prying open one of Harry's eyelids and looking for dilation of the pupils. "We get about seven Quidditch-related injuries a week. Isn't this the _second_ time he fell off his broom?"

"Not quite," Dumbledore said, smiling. "This time he was caught by Miss Bell as he fell... though her broom snapped in the process, the five-foot fall didn't hurt either of them badly."

Harry's eyelid snapped shut as Madam Pomfrey released it. He was going to have to remember to buy Katie a broom. "Where's Malfoy?" he asked, instead.

Dumbledore's smile faded. "That's exactly what we came to talk to you about, Harry," he replied, adjusting his glasses, "if you're not too tired, that is."

"I'm fine," Harry yawned.

"Professor, I don't think..." Madam Pomfrey began.

"He's fine, Poppy."

The flower name 'Poppy' brought back the dull paradox of horror that had sent him falling from his broom in the first place. Lily, Petunia, Narcissa. He hated flower names. If he ever saw Lavender Brown after this, he was going after her with pruning shears.

"Now, what exactly was going on up there?" asked Dumbledore. His voice was gentle, though it held a razor edge to it.

Harry rustled his sheets. "Where's Malfoy?" he asked again. "I saw him fly into the Forest."

Dumbledore's lips twitched slightly. "We don't know," he said truthfully. "We can't use a magical search in the Forest, because there'd be too much interference. We've got a search party out there as we speak."

Harry nodded and yawned loudly, letting his eyelids droop more than was needed. "Where's my Firebolt? This one didn't hit the whomping willow, did it?"

"Right there." The Professor pointed towards the corner of the room, where a broom was standing handle-down so as not to bend the tailstraws. "You're lucky the model has auto-brakes."

"That's nice," Harry said, adding a little snore.

"Professor," Madam Pomfrey seared, taking the bait, "Harry needs rest! Can't you see that? This can wait until the morning."

"But I'm not-"-yawn-"-sleepy," Harry protested half-heartedly. 

Professor Dumbledore looked from the fuming nurse to the seemingly asleep boy, smiled slightly, and shrugged. "More luck to you, then."

"Good night," Harry said by way of response. Dumbledore swept out of his chair and walked out the door, with Madam Pomfrey and the candle tisking behind. The door clicked shut.

Darkness resumed again, crawling in under the blankets and behind Harry's pillow. He was the picturesque of exhausted sleep for about ten minutes before sitting bolt upright and grabbing clumsily for his wand on the bedstand.

"Lumos," he muttered as the wandtip blazed into light, dazzling Harry's eyes with the brightness for a few moments. After blinking out the sunspots, Harry tilted the wand so that the light spilled over into the darker corners, where his broom was. He gently leapt out of the bed, landing catlike.

Tucking the folds of his blanket around his body and grabbing the broom, Harry opened the large window and jumped out.

The blanket twisted behind him in panicky waves as he nose-dived out of the turret. Swinging onto the broom, he eased the edge up slowly. Too fast and the broom would jet out from under him, leaving him in a bad position. The Firebolt had good handling, but it was _too_ good at times. On level flying position again, he zoomed over to the Quidditch field, holding his lighting wand up for view.

"I was about _here_ when Malfoy had the letter... or was I over there?" he muttered to himself, trying to reenact the scene in his mind. His bare legs rippled with goosebumps from the cold, and his teeth chattered as he waved the lighted wandtip around. "No, I was over there, because at the beginning of the second half, Slytherin was going _this_ way, and Malfoy bolted in the direction that _we_ were going in... oh bloody hell."

His wand had gone out. Smacking it against his freezing legs produced nothing more than red welts and a little more feeling his his limbs. Pointing it to the sky, he muttered an incantation he had heard Hermione doing, and a large ball of fire exploded out of his wand, attaching to the front of his broom. It didn't burn the wood of the broom, but it did warm Harry up a bit, and he left the balance of gravity to move closer to the fire.

"He went this way," Harry said with finality, zipping through the darkness.

The problem with the Forbidden Forest is that a great deal of it looks the same. There aren't that many remarkable landmarks anywhere, and Harry's heart fell into his stomach as he realized that looking for Malfoy was about as successful as looking for a specific grain of sand on a beach.

And what was he looking for him for, anyhow? Okay, fine. They were related. Well, it wasn't _fine_, but it was livable. Just because he was _related_ to Malfoy didn't mean that he had to _be_ like Malfoy. Harry certainly didn't intend to become Malfoy's best friend because Lily Potter happened to be related to Narcissa Malfoy. No, they had gone too far to become friends, not after all of these years.

_Now I'm sounding like an old man_, Harry thought, smiling as he snapped his way through some tree branches.

No, the reason that he was looking for Malfoy wasn't because they were cousins. No, it was because something from earlier was bothering him.

'"I was in the same house as your mother," Mr. Yamphiski had said, that day nearly three months ago at the sushi restaurant. "Ravenclaw."'

Didn't that letter Malfoy got say that Lily Potter was a _Gryffindor_?

# # #

The rising sun streaked through the Astronomy tower globe, alighting the mirror-tiles pink and sending a rosy glow throughout the glass walls and ceiling.

"We had better get going," Cho said, raking a hand through Hermione's frizzy hair in an affectionate manner. Hermione looked at the rapidly lighting sky and shook her head slightly.

"In more ways than one," Hermione sighed, shaking Cho's fingers out of her hair.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cho asked muzzily, standing up and stretching. Hermione tilted back her neck to look at her.

"That I think we shouldn't do this anymore."

Cho stopped stretching and looked at her, blinking. "Why?"

"Because I don't think it's right, going with Ron while you're going with me."

There was considering silence. "What if I dropped Ron?"

"Then it would be wrong, since you're Harry's inflamed crush."

Cho sighed prettily and sank back down to Hermione's level, taking Hermione's pale hands into her olive-skinned ones, rubbing her hands gently over them. "Then tell me," Cho crooned, "what I can do to keep you mine."

"Nothing," Hermione said, with rapidly dwindling stubbornness. This was hard, trying to quit like this, especially with Cho as unrelenting and passionate as she was. "I'm sorry, Cho."

"Are you sure?" wheedled Cho, lightly nipping at the soft lobe of Hermione's ear, her breath sending chills down Hermione's spine.

"Cho, you're not a slut," Hermione managed to say, keeping her arms from around the girl by holding them out to the sides like Cho was infected with Ebola. "Don't make me consider you one."

Cho slinked backwards from Hermione, sighing dreamily. "If you say so. I'll just have fun with Ronnie-kins for a while, then." She stuck out her hand for a handshake. "Friends?"

"Of course," Hermione said, taking the offered hand relieved that this had gone over so well. She stood up and left through the eastern door, chatting with Cho like two close friends, and not former lovers.

In the half-shade of early morning, Ron backed away from the crack in the western door of the astronomy tower; mouth set in a furious line, brown eyes leaking crystalline liquid freely.

# # #

It was around seven in the morning when Harry, by some miracle, had found Malfoy curled in a heap at the base of a great tree. He was still wearing his dark green Quidditch robes, and his hands clutched his broom to his chest like a security blanket, and he was sleeping. Harry landed in an exhausted pile beside him, extinguishing the fireball that clung to the front of his broom by ramming the broom-head into the dust.

"Malfoy," Harry grunted, gently shaking Malfoy's shoulder. "Malfoy?"

Malfoy groaned and hauled himself up, blinked, and groaned again, rubbing his face. "My back hurts like a bitch," he announced.

"Considering you've been sleeping on the ground all night, I'm somehow not astonished," Harry responded pleasantly, sitting down.

They stared at each other for a moment. "Fate and irony are a wedded couple," Malfoy said, staring into Harry's eyes unblinkingly.

"With aggravation as heir," Harry replied, breaking the staring contest by shaking his head. He looked back up at Malfoy, who was obviously not in the mood to deal with him, but not in the mood to fight, either.

"It had to be you," they chorused together.

"Do you have your mother's letter still?" asked Harry, holding out a hand. Malfoy reached into his pocket and threw him a piece of rumpled parchment.

"I hate you," Malfoy added for effect.

Harry ignored this overstated fact and read aloud from the letter. "Petunia and Lily... My maiden name was White... I was a Ravenclaw, though my sisters' last name was Evans. Lily was a Gryffindor. Petunia is a muggle, and Lily is deceased."

A small prick of realization and dull, dull horror lanced through Harry. The world shattered into a billion pieces and refused to come back together again. 

"You know," he said weakly, "that feeling when your entire life has been a lie, and all you want to do is fall over and disintegrate into a million little pieces?"

Malfoy leaned up against the large, grooved treetrunk and looked upwards, as if lost in thought. "Can't say I do," he replied airily, tapping his thumbs together.

"Narcissa's maiden name was White." Harry's voice had become tinny and dull. "My mother's maiden name was White."

Malfoy blinked at him for a second, his head tilted at him in wonder before rolling his eyes into the back of his head. "No, stupid, your mother's name was Evans. See? It says right there." He pointed a black-gloved finger against the parchment. Harry shook his head.

"I met someone when I was with my aunt and uncle," he said shakily, "when I was at a restaurant... he was a wizard... said he knew my mother... said she was a Ravenclaw, and kept on calling her Miss White..."

Malfoy's voice was dry and drawling. "Potter, your mother was a Gryffindor and would have been Miss Evans."

Harry stared at Malfoy for a long, long moment, like a deer into headlights on a train. Malfoy stared back just as balefully, fitting the fragments of what Harry was trying to say in his head. It finally clicked.

And Malfoy blacked out.

# # #

_Dear Mrs. Malfoy,_ the letter read on the neatly folded piece of parchment.

Narcissa Malfoy was in the library, idly running a pale, thin finger over the spines of brightly covered books, not exactly searching for something to read, just dawdling away the hours before her husband would return. It had been one day.

Then she smiled at herself, sounding like her life depended on her husband. Things were admittedly a lot more interesting when Lucius Malfoy was around to stir things up, but there was no reason to sit at home when he was away.

But there was nowhere to go.

The parchment had been dropped off by a brown school owl, sealed with wax and the Hogwarts emblem - not from her son, since his wax stamp had a letter 'D' carved into the wood. It was most likely from one of Draco's teachers or Dumbledore, informing them that her son had either done something stupid, like punch Harry Potter in the face, or gotten in trouble, for punching Harry Potter in the face.

Her husband and son were exactly alike, and this amused her to no extent.

She broke the multicolored wax seal with one hand, letting it crumble to the floor. Opening it, she read - 

Mrs. Narcissa Malfoy -

We write to inform you of your son's disappearance.

This unexpected announcement drove Narcissa to sink into her husband's desk chair, and she leaned heavily against the mahogany desk as she read on.

We advise you not to become alarmed, since as far as we know he is not harmed. He was last seen at the Quidditch match yesterday, on a Thursday, February nineteenth, when he unexpectedly swerved away from the match in pursuit of an owl post, which he apparently read, and bolted off into the Forbidden Forest.

Feel free to send a reply.

Professor Albus Dumbledore

Narcissa chewed on her knuckle, marring the perfect skin with teeth indentations as she thought. Lucius had been right. She never should have told him. No doubt that Harry Potter knew about this as well - damn it. Not what she needed. What was Lucius going to say when he got back?

_Nothing_, Narcissa thought fiercely as she reached for her wand, waving it angrily. She disappeared with a snap.

_He's not going to say anything at all, because there's going to be nothing left to say._

# # #

"What the hell did you think you were doing?" 

Hermione whipped around at the loud, agonized voice that sounded right behind her, to see Ron slam her up against the hard wall. The impact of her skin on the wall made a sickening smacking sound, and she dropped all of her books as she lost her wind.

"Ron!" she gasped in surprise, unable to say anything else. Ron shoved her harder against the wall, this time her head knocked against the mosaic with the impact.

"Better tell Harry," he mimicked in a cruel, high voice, "you don't want him to find out you're screwing with Cho." His voice changed, deep and angry. "Pot, kettle, Hermione."

_He knows._ Hermione looked up at him mildly. "So, finally figured it out, have you?"

The blandness of Hermione's voice angered Ron even more. He shoved her up against the mosaic wall again, for lack of words to say. Hermione twisted around to grab her wand, and drove the hard stick deep into his stomach. He keeled over, and Hermione pushed him away.

"Don't touch me," she said coldly, bending over to pick up her books, which were scattered haphazardly around the floor. "Besides, I broke it off with Cho. It's her you should be mad at anyway - I never would have if she didn't ask."

The thought of being unsatisfying to the one he loved - or more accurately, was addicted to - pushed Ron to his anger limit again. Growling, he swung his foot out to kick away a book that Hermione was bending over to retrieve. It skittered across the floor, pages flapping helplessly around like octopus limbs. Hermione patiently went over to pick it up again.

"It's over," Ron said, though Hermione wasn't sure if he was referring to his and Hermione's friendship or his and Cho's relationship. 

"Guys!" Neville came pounding up the hallway, red-faced and panting. "Harry's missing!"

"What?" asked Hermione and Ron in unison. Neville stopped for a moment, both to look at the scene and catch his breath. Ron was sprawled on the floor, leaning back on his arms crab-style, his face flushed and angry. Hermione was clutching a blue-covered book to her chest, with a muddy footprint stamped on the color that had the exact same pattern that the treads on Ron's sneakers had. 

He continued. "Harry disappeared from the infirmary last night..."

Ron sprang off the floor, and Hermione dropped her book as they both flew for the infirmary hallway, leaving books and wands and ripped pages in their wake.

# # #

Madam Pomfrey was having a very hard time keeping the crowds away from inside the infirmary. A student disappearing was too juicy with gossip to be left alone.

With an angry grunt, Madam Pomfrey held the wooden door closed with one hand, her muscles rippling through the sleeves of her robe as she did so, and threw a mightily strong locking curse on it a few times.

"I daresay," Madam Pomfrey said, her cheeks red with effort, "you've wound up the school again, Mr. Potter."

Harry was sitting on the edge of his infirmary bed, dressed in his normal clothes, his robe undone and revealing a pair of faded jeans and a striped shirt. He buried his head in his hands, his fingers knotting in his mussy black hair. Behind him, Malfoy whimpered in his state of half-unconsciousness.

When Malfoy had blacked out, Harry had seized the opportunity to haul him on his Firebolt and slowly fly back to the school. He entered discreetly through the open turret window into a chaotic mess. News travels faster than magic, and it had been the talk of the school - Malfoy and Potter were both gone.

Now, as Harry had his hands buried in his thick mat of hair, he wished harder than ever he had not found the trunk marked with an N in the Dursley's attic.

The noise outside subsided a bit, then nearly silenced to a dull murmur. Madam Pomfrey whirled around from her pulse check on Malfoy to glare with suspicion at the door.

Then there was banging. "I demand to see my son!" a shrill voice called out.

"That'll be Mrs. Malfoy," the nurse sighed, dropping Malfoy's wrist to the mattress and going to uncurse the door.

Before she had it all the way open, a slim but supple white wrist snaked through the opening and slammed the door open.

It was Narcissa Malfoy, all right. But she looked different from when Harry had seen her at the Quidditch World Cup the year before.

She was dressed more casually, in long black pants that flared out delicately at the feet and collected to gather at curvy hips, and she was wearing a medieval style top in white, with laces that could be tied at the top, but they weren't - leaving an expanse of milky white chest to be admired. Her bottle-green robes were undone and flowing, following behind in an obedient wave as she walked. Her long blonde hair - nearly the color of Malfoy's - swayed like silk ribbon in a breeze and her dark green eyes blazed as she marched right past the nurse and over to Malfoy, who was still out.

"What happened?" she demanded, sitting on the mattress next to Harry, hovering over Malfoy.

"He went out cold when I told him you were my mother," Harry muttered into his hands, gripping his hair tighter.

There was palpable silence after this remark. Harry peeked out from behind his fingers when he saw Narcissa, paler than normal, look at him oddly.

"I never said anything about you being my son," she said quietly. Harry's palms became of great interest of him, all of a sudden.

"Do you know a Mr. Yamphiski?" asked Harry softly.

"Paul," Narcissa said, her green eyes riveted uncomfortably on Harry's head. "Paul Yamphiski. He was in my house."

"Ravenclaw," Harry said quietly. "He said that my mother's last name was White, and she was in Ravenclaw... and that she had a friend that was nearly a sister, named Lily..."

"Tell us it isn't true, Mother." Malfoy's eyes were open again. "Tell us that this is just an overactive reflex of Potty's imagination over there."

It was on the tip of Narcissa's tongue to say no. But, it was hard to do, with two pair of icy, leafy eyes staring at her firmly from behind walls of moisture. Narcissa rubbed the side of her head.

"It was a long time ago, so I suggest you get comfortable."

# # #

Night wrapped around the globe, smothering it into blackness. Tiny diamonds dotted the sky, and everybody was getting ready for bed. Narcissa White slammed her fist up against the white wall of her bedroom, screaming at the poster of The Beetles on the wall.

"It's not fair!" she yelled at John Lennon. 

"Narcissa," Lily groaned, curling up on her bed, "please."

Narcissa whirled around to glare at the younger girl curled on the bottom bunk. The room was small enough, with a bunk bed and a twin in the other corner. Posters were plastered up upon the walls, some moving, some not. The room itself was reasonably clean - there was no room for clutter in a duplex bedroom with three teenage girls. It was made even smaller with Narcissa screaming.

"It's a Friday night!" Narcissa yelled at Lily. "It's a God damn Friday night and I'm nearly eighteen. I want to go out!"

"Well, Daddy says no," Lily replied, rolling to face the wall.

"He's not my daddy," Narcissa snapped. "Why the hell should I listen to him?"

Lily rolled over, glaring. Her red hair plastered around the pillow, spreading on the cotton like licks of flame. "He's been your daddy for long enough."

"Jonathon can kiss my ass."

"Your _father_ would be upset if he heard you say that."

"_Jonathon_ doesn't give a damn about me either way," Narcissa said, rifling through her closet for something to wear. "And I'm going out tonight no matter what he says."

Lily shrugged and rolled to face the wall, sliding her thumb in her mouth, a bad habit that she had when she was angry or sad. Narcissa talking about her father in that manner made her angry. Though it was true that Narcissa's father wasn't Jonathon - he was a wizard name Charles White, who died by the hands of a new villain that was making the Ministry of Magic anxious - an upstart that called himself Voldemort.

Lily, who was in her sixth year at a magical school called Hogwarts, didn't trouble herself with such matters.

Then her thumb was yanked out of her mouth. Narcissa was leaning over her, dressed in a bright pink, skin-tight top that wound around her breasts like a strip of cloth and left the rest of her midriff bare. Her bellbottoms were skin tight except for where they flared out at the end.

"Don't suck your thumb," admonished Narcissa severely, "or you'll have to have braces like your dear sister."

Lily snorted at the mention of her magical-phobic sister, Petunia. Petunia slept downstairs on the couch during the summer, refusing to have anything to do with magic at all. Lily thought that Petunia was simply afraid of magical powers, and forgave Petunia most of her snobby stunts. Narcissa took Petunia's rejection of magic as a personal offence, and as a result the two half-sisters hated each other with a passion.

Narcissa stopped at the doorframe. "Night night," she said, before snapping the lightswitch off.

Lily shrugged in the darkness, and her thumb popped back into her mouth.

# # #

Narcissa crept down the stairs quietly and nearly made it to the door before she was stopped.

"Father isn't going to be happy," Petunia said, over the volume of the television flipping channels, "when I tell him that this is the fifth night in a row that you've snuck out."

Narcissa sighed with impatience, her hand on the doorknob. She whirled around. "What do you want?" she asked. "Money?"

Petunia shook her head, clicking through the stations again.

"Clothes?"

_Click_, went the remote.

"A life?"

_Snap_, the television said as it turned off. Petunia, to Narcissa's surprise, wasn't wearing her frumpy nightclothes as she expected, but tight, plastic-y black shorts, and a flaming red halter-top.

"I want to come."

"There's going to be wizards aplenty, sister dear."

"I'll just tell Father, then..."

"Are you coming, or not?"

# # #

The party was being held at a very, very large house. The two half-sisters walked up to the gates, and Narcissa tapped an intercom with her pinky nail.

"If anybody asks," Narcissa hissed to her sister as Petunia touched up her makeup, "you're a wizard."

Petunia's dull gold-green eyes snapped in the direction of Narcissa. "And why is that?"

"Because we're going to Malfoy Manor, and you being here is about as safe as being a gypsy in a Nazi concentration camp."

Started by the brutal comparison, Petunia swallowed hard, but held her neck up. Narcissa had to hand it to her - if Narcissa herself was a muggle, there would be no way she would come within a twenty kilometer radius of this place. But then again, Petunia hadn't heard the rumors about the Malfoys.

She felt somewhat bad about not telling Petunia about the Malfoys, but the feeling was shunted when the gates opened, giving the two girls access to the long winding road.

"This place is huge!" breathed Petunia in awe, looking at the enormous manor that loomed before her like a dark monster in the starry night.

"Yeah," Narcissa said, dismissing the awestruck comment. "Make up a pusedo-name. If anybody asks, I don't know you, so you're on your own. Hopefully everybody'll be so high that they won't think to ask who you really are."

"Fine," Petunia snapped, as Narcissa knocked.

The door was promptly opened by a butler that didn't ask any questions, and lead them around a few impressive halls and into a large room.

The halls were dimly light by candelabras, and walking into the party room was like walking into the gates of heaven.

The room was packed to the gills with people, all of which were making tremendous amounts of noise and swaying their bodies around to the beat of dance music. A bar in the corner was thronged with people who were obviously minors and bright lights of rapidly flashing colors swerved around like a flashy, metallic pinwheel. A cloud of smog from narcotics swirled around the room.

The moving crowd soon swallowed Narcissa, leaving Petunia on her own. Swallowing, the muggle girl pushed her way through the throng, not sure what she was looking for, until she felt a hand on her shoulder. Petunia jumped and whirled around.

She was face to face with a rather attractive young man with blonde hair plastered to his head with sweat. He was shirtless, revealing a rather eye-pleasing expanse of chest and a pair of skin-tight jeans. In his right hand he held a bottle of something pink. He was obviously snockered.

"Hey there baby," he said drunkenly, "I ain't never seen you in these here parts 'fore, sugar-bunches... wha's your name?"

Petunia's mind fumbled. "Pansy," she said to the drunken boy. "And who might you be?"

The boy laughed and shook the bottle, the pink liquid slopping over the sides. He took a long pull of the liquid before answering.

"My name's Lucius Malfoy... baby, it's always a pleasure. Have a drink." He tilted Petunia's head back and poured some of the pink liquid down her throat.

Petunia's first reaction was to spit it back up, but she swallowed it anyway... hey... it was pretty good! 

Lucius suddenly growled and let a finger teasingly slide under the red halter-top that Petunia wore. She gasped, but then clutched for the pink bottle that Lucius held in his hand. Tilting her head back with a wild cry, she downed the rest in three swigs.

Smiling, Lucius grabbed another two bottles of the pink liquid and cradled Petunia close. "I know a place where we can be alone," he said suggestively, tinkling the glass of the two bottles together.

Petunia, already lost, giggled and let the charming - albeit drunken - young man, carry her out of the party. 

# # #

Narcissa, meanwhile, had made her way over to the bar, where a harried house-elf was working over time, shaking up strange mixes for the young people that were waiting impatiently, and sometimes getting enjoyment by making the elf inflict punishment on himself for not going fast enough. The cries sounded something like this:

"Pina Colada!"

"Poke yourself in the eye!"

"Brandy, on the rocks!"

"Slam your ears in the oven!"

"Crush your fingers in the ice machine!"

"I _said _I wanted a-" hiccup "-Pina Colada, elf!"

"One vodka, make it hard!" Narcissa yelled to the house elf, which was trying to mix tequila and smash his ears in the ice machine in the same time. The drunken humans roared with laughter.

"Narcissa!"

Narcissa turned coolly around to find... James Potter.

"What the hell are you doing here? You - You're a Gryffindor! They'll kill you if they find you here!" Narcissa cried, gasping. She reached over behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of straight whiskey, tearing off the cork and downing a few gulps. Her face contorted at the taste of it, but she shook her head to clear it.

James Potter smiled leerily - he was drunk as well. He put a hand around Narcissa waist and rubbed himself against her hip. "Wha's it matter, Sexy? Not that anybody's here sober 'nuff to tell their assholes from a hole in the ground."

Narcissa was amused that he was so drunk - at Hogwarts, James was a responsible, caring, reserved individual. He had drunk away all of his inhibitions, obviously. She took another pull at the whiskey bottle, savoring its complex taste, and planning to get drunk as soon as possible.

"Le's dance," she told him. James smiled and led her on the dance floor. Narcissa had no head for alcohol. It didn't take long to drink herself into oblivion - and into bed.

# # #

"I feel like hell in a handbasket," Narcissa moaned to her half-sister. Petunia moaned in unison and leaned over the toilet, spewing the contents of her stomach into the john. Narcissa took a saltine cracker and nibbled at the side.

It had been three weeks since the party. At first, Narcissa had attributed her sickness to a hangover... but the sickness had lasted. Then she missed her period. Now she was getting rather scared. 

"We're pregnant," Petunia said weakly, eyes welling with tears. "I _never_ should have gone to that stupid party!"

"Oh, shut up," Narcissa snapped. Then, after a moment's silence, she added, "You never did tell me who you were with."

Petunia heaved over the toilet again before answering. "Lucius Malfoy."

This startled Narcissa so that she had to cast into the toilet after Petunia. "_Lucius_ Malfoy!" cried Narcissa. Petunia nodded and weakly reached up and pulled the flush handle. As the contents of the toilet sloshed around, Narcissa slumped against the side of the porcelain bowl. 

"What about you?" asked Petunia quietly, leaning against the tiled wall.

"You wouldn't know him. James Potter."

Petunia shrugged - she didn't know him. "What do we do?" whimpered Petunia.

"We have the babies," Narcissa shrugged. "Jonathon is never going to approve of abortion. And neither do I. The Wizarding Paternal Law takes care of the rest."

"The what?"

Narcissa sighed. She had forgotten that she was dealing with a non-wizard. "The Wizarding Paternal Law," she said carefully, "is a law that states that if a man makes a woman pregnant, and the female is too young or irresponsible, or raped, then the man has to take the baby and provide an adequate home for it, or else."

"Or else what?"

"You go to Azkaban. And before you ask, Azkaban is a horrible wizarding prison. So, we can appeal to be too young."

"I see."

# # #

Nine months passed. Narcissa did not go to school during this time - she was homeschooled to avoid embarrassment, and so was Petunia.

They both gave birth to two, healthy, strong babies, which they left unnamed, since they were to be given to the fathers.

And it must be admitted that even Narcissa felt a little pinch of sorrow when her finger curved around her sweet baby's innocent cheek - he had a mop of dark black hair already, and when he opened his eyes, they were the dark green of Narcissa's own. It hurt when she had to sign the papers that would put the Wizarding Paternal Law into action. For a moment, she had wanted to keep her sweet, helpless baby boy all to herself.

She turned into her pillows on her hospital bed to hide the tears as the little black-haired boy was taken away from her arms, forever.

# # #

Petunia had a different manner all together. She herself marched up to Malfoy Manor and banged on the intercom.

"Yes?" asked a voice.

"I need to speak to Lucius Malfoy," Petunia said crisply. The little blonde haired boy stirred at a cold wind and whimpered. "Shut up, you," she added to the basket, which the boy was in, giving the wicker a little nudge with her toe.

The gates opened, and Petunia gathered her baby basket and walked down the path which she did nine months earlier, and rapped on the door.

Lucius Malfoy was standing in the threshold of the foyer, arms akimbo, looking very stern. He didn't look a thing like the partying young man of nine months earlier. "Yes?" he asked in a frosty voice.

Petunia dropped the basket to the floor at Lucius's feet, along with the Wizarding Paternal Law sheets. The baby in the basket began to cry. "That," she said over the boy's wailing, "is your son."

Lucius stared, shocked, at the writhing basket at his feet. "What?"

"Nine months ago," Petunia said sharply. "Party. You know me as 'Pansy', though you were probably too plastered to remember."

Lucius's face twitched. Then he blanched. "No... no, you couldn't have gotten pregnant. We didn't do anything!"

"Nine months!" Petunia said shrilly. "Nine months of heaving into toilets and eating saltine crackers! Nearly forty-eight hours of labor! I can vouch for it - I have pictures!"

Tears were welling in Petunia's eyes as she threw a muggle photograph at Lucius of her holding a towheaded child. "He's yours, Lucius! And I wash my hands of him!" With all her strength, she slapped Lucius as hard as she could, then ran off down the lane, sobbing.

Lucius looked after her for a moment, before picking up the papers. They were officially signed and stamped... along with the bloodtest results... they must have gotten the blood from the packet that his father made him donate... red bubbled in front of his eyes, directed at the squirming child in the basket.

Without a word, he kicked the wicker hard with his foot, sending the basket sliding across the floor. The baby inside screamed.

# # #

Harry sobbed into his hands... he was a lie... but above all that... his mother was right here in front of him. He felt arms around his waist, and was pulled close into Narcissa's embrace, her fingers wrapping around his hair so hard it almost hurt, but Harry didn't care.

There was a creak of movement, and Malfoy had flung himself in the direction of Narcissa his arms twining around her waist, sobbing unashamedly into her robes. Narcissa released on hand from Harry and used it to pull Malfoy closer. She herself was crying first into her biological son's black hair, and then into her emotional son's blonde hair.

They stayed that way for a long time. 

# # #


	6. 

Guuzen no deai ga mirai made kaete shimau 

Guuzen no deai ga mirai made kaete shimau 

kiseki o shinji na yo umakeu ikusa 

It's gonna be OK!

A chance meeting can change your whole future

Believe in miracles, things will work out...

It's gonna be OK!

Dare ni m wataseni taisetusena mono wa hitotsu 

__

Chance wa ichido dake te ni irero yo ashita ja osoi

There's just one thing so important you can't entrust it to anyone --

There's only one chance, reach out for it -- tomorrow's too late

Tabun umaku iku ze dakara umaku izu ze

__

Chance wa me no mae

Daijoubu kitto OK!

Tabun umaku iku ze dakara umaku izu ze

Owari no nai yume no tame ni

Maybe it will turn out fine, yeah, so I'm sure it will turn out fine

Your chance is right in front of you --

It's fine... it's sure to be OK!

Maybe it will turn out fine, yeah, so I'm sure it will turn out fine

The dream never ends...

# # #

And so Lucius Malfoy returned from Nigeria. The African Ministry of Magic was having some strange problem with a hex on zebras - the muggle newspapers were blaring with news of orange and lime striped zebras running through the majestic savanna. Strange, yes. But the clothing companies were having a field day with orange-striped zebra faux fur as a new fashion. After a while, the magical world decided to leave the muggles to their new fancy, and Lucius had been able to go home.

And for this Lucius was unbelievably glad. Despite being the end of February, it was hotter than an oven in the savanna, and he embraced the cold, sleety weather of England happily from a change of blazing hot sun. He also embraced the fact that he was coming back to a quiet family life with his wife. He was ready for a mug of tea and around a year of sleep to make up for jet lag.

He got one out of two of these wishes. He was enjoying his mug of tea when Narcissa walked in, red faced.

What she said next definitely denied him a year of sleep. "He knows, Lucius."

Narcissa could have been talking about several 'hes', but Lucius was a pretty sharp person, and he promptly gasped in the steaming tea, and elegantly bent over, spewing tea from his nostrils and coughing.

"_What?_"

"Correction," Narcissa said dryly, after watching her husband drop his teacup on the rug, staining it. "_they_ know."

"You _told_ them?!" roared Lucius, lunging out of his chair. Narcissa stepped neatly aside, looking up dolefully at her enraged, sleep-deprived husband.

"Not exactly," she said mildly. "They figured out most of it on their own. I just filled in the rest of it." Lucius heaved, looking quite like a bull. "Lucius, they would have figured out eventually anyway. What difference does it make if it's now, or five years from now?"

Lucius spluttered, at a loss for words for once.

Narcissa arched an eyebrow.

Lucius gave up on the staring contest and plucked his teacup from the rug, and refilled it was shaking fingers, heaping in the sugar. "What happened?" he asked. Narcissa sat down on the couch and filled her own teacup, blowing on the steam.

"Sit down," she ordered her husband. "This could take a while."

# # #

Harry's eyes popped open in the infirmary. He felt a bit disoriented and hazy, but otherwise okay. The curtains were drawn around his bed so it was hard to tell the time of day, but he wasn't sleepy anymore. In fact, he felt more wide-awake at the moment than he had in his entire life, he thought.

Sitting up, he drew aside the bedcurtains and grabbed for his Quidditch robes, which were the only things he had to wear, and drew the red crimson material over his head, smoothing back his dirty hair with his absent hands. His fingers were numb and he had to patiently wait for a bit before they'd comply with his wishes. White curtains had been drawn around another bed in the infirmary, signifying that Malfoy was resting peacefully in the medical haven. Harry sniffed. He hated the smell of the infirmary - the smell of magic working miracles was too nauseating at the moment and he stepped out of the stuffy room in a trance, not caring if Madam Pomfrey attempted to stop his efforts.

It was during a class, and nobody was out roaming the halls, save the occasional errant student that neglected to take any notice of him. Harry, feeling blissfully disconnected, wandered aimlessly through the empty halls, marveling at the sound of his shoes echoing against the tile floor. Nothing else seemed to matter so much, as long as he could stay in this bleak sense of indifference.

After meandering around for a while, he finally swerved his way up to the Gryffindor dorms and the Fat Lady smiled at him.

"Having a rough week, dear?" asked the portrait fondly.

Harry blinked at the painting thickly. "Screw you," he said evenly.

The Fat Lady made a face at him. "I hate the new password," she muttered, swinging on her hinges. "It makes me feel so insulted every time somebody wants to get in."

"Password changes in a week," Harry told her, stepping in.

"Good. This time, however, don't let that Fred Weasley character pick it out!"

The picture clicked shut behind him, as Harry walked forward into a heated screaming match.

"I hate you!" Hermione reached for a vase of red roses and hurled it at Ron. She missed by quite a lot and the porcelain chips shattered on the wall as water and roses fell down.

The entire room was in shreds. The pictures had been ripped, the frames broken. The scarlet covering on the chairs had been slit in several places, and the creamy white stuffing pulled out and hurled around the room. Various colored splotches dabbled on the walls like thrown paint, and cracks and dents were smattered all around.

Ron aimed his wand at Hermione and shouted angrily. Something greenish whizzed out and Hermione ducked. Green ooze smacked the wall with a wet sound, trailing down the white walls.

"Go to hell!" Ron screamed.

Hermione glowered and threw a book at Ron's head. It hit, and Ron hissed in pain as her rubbed the new tender spot. They both glared at each other.

"How could you do this to me?!" the two irate teenagers chorused.

"You stole my girlfriend!" Ron snarled, lunging. He grabbed Hermione's hair and both of them somersaulted.

"You stole _Harry's _crush!" Hermione shot back, after they finished tumbling. "What's so wrong with me doing what you're doing?"

Harry blinked. Hermione had stolen Ron's girlfriend? Who was Harry's crush? He watched the two roll on the ground for a bit more. Well, they had be be talking about Cho. He had never told either of them directly that he had a crush on the Oriental girl, but he had been quite obvious about it. So, did that mean that Hermione was homosexual? Well, she had to be at least bisexual, Harry thought.

The situation was almost comical. If Harry hadn't been so detached, he would have probably laughed. There he was, thinking about his best friend's sexual orientation while the two people in question rolled and punched and bit and kicked on the magic-stained floor. It was almost pathetic.

Finally, Ron noticed him. He let go of Hermione's hair and looked up, turning rather ashen. "Um, hey, Harry. How's it going?"

Harry favored both of them with a blank look before ascending the stairs to his dormitory. The screams of his feuding friends echoed loudly, even after Harry put his pillow over his head. He wished he could smother himself.

To his shame, two tears leaked from his eyes, pooling in the lenses of his glasses. A sob ripped from his throat, muffled into the soft mattress. Everything was so misplaced and forgotten and hopeless that nothing seemed to matter, but it all did, and it was probably never going to get better.

# # # 

The entire pot of tea had been downed and Lucius had since been reduced to drinking aged tequila straight from the bottle by the time Narcissa had finished. Bottles of brandy, gin and rum also lay empty at his feet. Narcissa drew up the side of her mouth, knowing that she probably shouldn't have let Lucius drink so much, but she hadn't really noticed while she had been talking.

"'M such a moron," Lucius said, slouching down in his chair.

Narcissa, who knew very well that Lucius had no head for alcohol, eyed her husband warily. "Well, there's not much you can do about that anymore..."

"Pansy," he muttered. "'dis is all Pan-" - he hiccuped - "Pansy's fault."

"Lucius," Narcissa said after a moment, "you're drunk."

Lucius rolled his slightly pink-rimmed eyes towards her and buried his face in his hands. "'M sorry," he whimpered quietly. "'M sorry, sorry, sorry..."

Gingerly - in case Lucius became violent - Narcissa scooted across the room and slid into the seat next to her husband, putting her arms around his chest. He leaned back into her body.

Lucius was not a very touchy-feely person to begin with, and this sudden eagerness for human contact somewhat startled Narcissa. It was very cramped on the plush chair, and not to mention the tequila fumes and Lucius's warm body, made feverish by the alcohol. Lucius sniffed, sighed, and settled backwards. 

"'M sorry," Lucius offered. "'M sorry that D-Draco had to find out, sorry that he's not your son, sorry that this ever happened, sorry that..." He stopped abruptly, running out of things to be sorry for. "'M sorry," he finished finally.

Narcissa sighed and drew the inebriated one closer to her, gently kissing his temple. "It's all right. I'm sorry also."

Sighing, Lucius's eyes fluttered shut. "Love you."

Narcissa smiled at her husband. _Oh, Lucius, you're so sweet like this... even if you are a little... wobbly._ "I love you too."

Her words fell upon deaf ears, as Lucius had fallen fast asleep. Unable to move because of the dead weight on her lap, Narcissa blew out a sigh and settled against the back of the chair, watching the setting sun peek out from behind the windowsill, and eventually falling asleep herself.

# # #

Inky blackness fell over the atmosphere when Harry next rose from his bed. He wasn't sleepy at all anymore - on the contrary he was wide-awake, albeit a little drained and hollow feeling. His cheeks felt puffy from tears and he was headachy from stifling his sobs into a mattress until he fell asleep. Massaging his sore head, he walked out of the room and down into the bathrooms, where he slurped greedily at the tap water and splashed the rest of the cold liquid over his face. 

Toweling himself dry, he felt strangely better. Replacing his glasses, he peered in the mirror. The glum lighting of the bathroom made him look sickly and pale, and his glasses looked huge for his face. His hair was so greasy it actually shone in the pale candlelight, and he might have taken a shower if his hygiene actually mattered to him. Instead he shuffled out and sat in one of the destroyed chairs - the teachers hadn't been in to fix them yet. After a few minutes of silence he got up and went back up to his room to grab his invisibility cloak.

Tonight would be a good night to look at the stars, and the Astronomy Tower was never locked.

# # #

The moon filtered through the windowed dome of the Tower, glittering off of the reflecting mirror tiles. The moonlight pooled in the mirrors, making it ripple and waver like actual water. A long shadow was cast into the lake of moonlight, a shadow that belonged to a person standing by a panel in the window-dome. Harry threw his invisibility cloak off his shoulders and addressed the figure that was sharing the room with him. "Malfoy, are you stalking me?"

__

Weird taboo. I'm always where he is.

Malfoy looked ethical in the moonlight, holding a smoking wandtip in one hand. In the panel of thick glass in front of him, a portal about as tall and wide as a door had been chiseled, the edges unfinished and sharp. Nighttime air ghosted through the opening, pushing silver blonde hair backwards and black robes upward. He dropped the wand, and it clattered to the tile, and proceeded to roll into the puddle of moonlight.

"To be or not to be, is that the question, Malfoy?" Harry asked, in a half-jokingly, half-exasperated tone.

Malfoy didn't even spare him a glance over the shoulder. "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles. And by opposing them? To die; to sleep, no more. And by sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir. Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die; to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream, ay there's the rub... for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come... " He said it softly, so softly that the blowing wind nearly drowned him out.

It took a moment for Harry to regain his articulation. "Shakespeare buff, are we?"

"Fuck off, Potter."

"Yeowch. It has teeth."

Malfoy did not respond to this either, but he reached out his hand and gripped the sharp glass edges of the hole in the dome. Dark liquid soon dribbled down the sides, and Malfoy still kept his vigilant lookout over the land surrounding Hogwarts.

"You're not going to jump," Harry said dully.

"Don't even start on talking me out of this."

"I'm not talking you out of this. I want you to find some other way to bite the dust because _I'm _jumping." The statement was hollow. A delaying tactic. Not because he wasn't interested in dying - the idea had merit - it was just that jumping seemed like a very uncomfortable way to go, and he felt an obligation to at least attempt to keep Malfoy alive for the moment, so he could say he tried. Or he could say he pushed him off the edge. Whatever suited him at the time.

"Like hell you're using my hole. I got here first."

The argument was unusually subdued. No yelling, no screaming about bad blood or bad hearts. Just sadly quiet, like something insignificant.

There was awkward silence as Malfoy withdrew his hand from the sharp glass, and looked at the red slice in the skin. Harry walked up and stood on the ledge. Malfoy stepped aside, and now they were both in the chill night air.

Awkward silence. "Is there anything you'd like to talk about?" Harry asked stickily, like the words were hard to say.

Harry expected an angry bite, or at least a sarcastic drawl. "Potter," Malfoy said quietly, "you've destroyed me. What else do you want? Apologies? Do you want me to beg for forgiveness for wronging your muggle-born friends? Whatever you want, fine. I won't be around long enough to watch you enjoy it anyhow."

The soft, defeated voice was almost enough to make Harry want to cry. Almost. "What do you mean, 'I've destroyed you'?" he asked gently, feeling estranged.

Dull, dirty gray eyes peered at him lazily. "Potter, I'm half muggle. How the hell can I hate muggle borns if I'm one myself? That's rather - hyprocritic, don't you agree? And I'm not going to twist around and say that I've seen my wrongs because I'm a muggle born myself, and I can't go on the way I have." He looked out at the chill night, and then back at Harry. "So, I'm going out with a bang. If you want me to put a good word in for you to God, then go down there and make sure I fall in an attractive position, would you? Have a nice life."

And he walked off the edge. Harry snatched his wrist and dragged him back inside the dome.

"You actually think," Harry said dryly, "that I'm just going to _stand here_ and _watch_ you fall to your doom?"

"You don't have to watch," Malfoy said, looking slightly annoyed. His face softened again into that indifferent state. Harry shuddered. "Go out the eastern door, and down the stairs. I'll wait until you're gone."

Harry swallowed. It was so easy. He could just turn around and walk away, and Malfoy would wait, the end of his life measured by his enemy's fading footsteps, and... jump...

"_No_."

Malfoy's face hardened, and he yanked backwards with the arm Harry held. Thrown off guard by the sudden shift of his weight, Harry stumbled forward, but threw himself away from the opened glass dome. Malfoy fell forward with him, his neck whipping in an uncomfortable position as he rolled over and landed squarely on Harry. Snarling, Malfoy hauled himself upwards and _threw_ himself towards the hole in the dome, falling over the edge.

Harry kept a clamp-hold on Malfoy's right leg, but the weight of Malfoy's body mass falling into empty space was too much for Harry to stop. Before he could react, he was dragged savagely over the sharp glass, tearing off several layers of skin, and falling into the frigid night air.

# # #

It had been a fairly easy task, getting into Hogwarts, even at the dead of night. His influence was sufficient, and security was incredibly lax. Not that he planned to check in with Dumbledore anyway - that would lead to a litter of unwanted questions that would waste precious time and energy. The halls were very dim, almost as dim as the memory guiding him through the halls of his old school. 

He and his son were exactly alike; after all, he knew what Draco was going to do, given the circumstances. It was the exact same thing that Lucius himself had tried to do when he had been landed with Draco as his son nearly sixteen years before. But somebody had stopped him from jumping - a certain female someone that had come up to gaze at the stars found the distraught teenage boy standing on the outer ledge of the Astronomy Tower, contemplating whether he should jump into the wind or not.

She had talked him down. He didn't know how, bless his soul, but she had talked him down. He didn't even remember what she had said, exactly, but it had gotten him off the ledge and into the dome.

Lucius Malfoy was never a man of many emotions. In fact, there were only two people in the entire room he ever allowed himself true emotion in front of him - two people that had ever seen him at his extreme happiest or in tears. And those were his father, who was long deceased, and the teenage girl that had talked him down from death, who became his wife.

And that was why he was so amused when he watched the exchange between his son and Harry Potter, as his son stood on the brink of death, and another boy, who was just as confused and unhappy, halfheartedly tried to talk him down. Lucius was especially impressed with the Shakespeare quotations on behalf of his son - so he really had been listening all those times he read to Draco in bed.

He was, however, not amused when Draco finally chose death and leapt over the side, dragging Harry Potter with him.

Lucius lunged over to the open portal and whipped out his wand.

"_Wingardium Levosia!_"

# # #

Falling through empty air was actually quite exhilarating, once you got used to the shock, Harry noted, spreading out his limbs to catch the breeze. His glasses fell off, falling upwards as he fell down. The ground became very blurry now, with his watering eyes and his glasses gone. So he shut his eyes and waited for impact. It was the only sensible thing to do.

And then a feeling of great pain, like he had been nailed in the stomach very roughly with a metal pole. Harry felt for sure he had hit the ground, until he felt himself rising upwards, gasping for a breath that his lungs desperately wanted but couldn't seem to handle.

__

I'm dead. The thought came dimly as his eyes squeezed tightly shut. _I'm dead and I'm going for Judgement... Oh God, oh God, oh God..._

And then he was on solid ground. His eyes opened to the blurry scene of the inside of the Astronomy Tower and his brain reeled with the fogged vision of a large blurry figure nearly tackling a smaller blurry figure - which had to be Draco.

"Don't you _ever_ do... _ever, ever_..."

Harry blinked. The voice was very familiar, though Harry couldn't quite put a finger on it, to his frustration. Rubbing his eyes, he wished desperately for his glasses so he could see straight.

"Father..." The whimper came from the Draco-blur. Panic sliced through Harry in his post-near-death-experience haze - he most assuredly did _not_ want to be half-blind and wandless in front of Lucius Malfoy. Groping carefully across the tiled floor, he shimmied to the wall and started to feel around for the door, keeping his unfocused eyes carefully on the living blurs in front of him.

"Why?" asked Lucius, grabbing his son's shoulders hard enough to bruise in case Draco decided to bolt for the window again.

Draco mumbled something incoherent into his father's robes. It sounded vaguely like 'Hybrid scum... don't want me'.

Lucius groaned and pulled his son back; shaking Draco so hard that his head bobbed back and forth like he was nodding 'yes'. "I don't give a damn if you're _mudblood_ scum, you're _my_ hybrid scum!" he cried, unsure of how to word what he wanted to say. "Do you _know_ what hell you'd put your mother-" He had to stop here... considering that Narcissa wasn't, technically, Draco's mother. After clearing his throat uncomfortably at the silence, he shook Draco again. "_Narcissa _in if you jumped?!"

This made Draco burst forth again, indignantly. "She's not my mother!" he screamed. "My mother's a magic-phobe!"

Waves of crimson fury broke over the shore that was Lucius. Releasing his son, he pushed Draco so that he reeled and slapped him, hard, across his right cheek, knocking him to the floor. "I also don't give a damn if your mother's a goat!" Lucius bellowed, looming over his son furiously, hand raised in case Draco tried to get up. "She still loves you, for what reason I can't begin to fathom, because she obviously means nothing to you!"

The sight of his father hovering over him with his hand raised was enough to keep Draco on the ground. He curled around himself in a protective ball, in case Lucius resorted to further violence and shook like a jelly mold.

Meanwhile, Harry had been relentlessly edging around the circular tower, feeling behind him for an opening to exit out of, while keeping an eye riveted on Lucius Malfoy, who was screaming himself hoarse at his son. Seeing the violent mood that Lucius seemed to be in, Harry moved even faster across the slick floor, scooting somewhat quietly over the mirror-like tile. 

His hands slid across a wand that had rolled around the perimeter of the domed room, and he grabbed at it, shaking as he pressed against the glass wall, gripping the shaft of wood like it was the last concrete thing on earth.

# # #

Narcissa pounded up the stairs towards the Astronomy Tower. Unlike her husband, she had been unable to avoid detection, and an irate Professor McGonagall was skimming behind her heels in a nightrobe.

"Mrs. Malfoy, please!" The Professor said shrilly, gathering the folds of her white robe in a hand. "If you won't tell me what's going on, I'll be forced to take legal action...!"

"Do whatever the hell you want," Narcissa snapped. "Send me to Azkaban, snap my wand, whatever, but you're not stopping me!" She didn't even glance over her shoulder as she rounded on for another set of stairs.

This actually stunned the professor into silence for a moment, before she picked up speed. "Would you at _least_ tell me what's going on? What's so important that you have to come barging into Hogwarts at-" she paused to look at a timepiece on her wrist "-three thirty in the morning?!"

"No," Narcissa replied evenly, stomping up the last flight of stairs and flinging open the doors to the Tower.

It was freezing in the room, mostly because of a large hole that had been cut in the glass on the westerly side of the dome. Draco was laying, curled up on the floor while Lucius bellowed above him, and Harry Potter was pressed up against the wall next to the hole in the dome, shivering, disheveled, and grabbing a wand like he was being attacked by a Blast-Ended Skrewt.

"Ehen?" was the only coherent sound that Professor McGonagall was able to make out as Narcissa swooped across the room to her son - Harry - and left the teacher behind, gawking at the scene.

"Harry?" asked Narcissa gently, kneeling beside the boy, gently placing a hand on his matted black hair. "Harry?"

Harry turned his crossed green eyes in the direction of Narcissa, breathing hard. "It's cold," the boy said quietly.

"I know it is," Narcissa said sympathetically, slowly sliding her fingers over Harry's wand, wincing, as they were as cold as ice. "Harry, let go of the wand. It's going to be all right. I promise."

Harry sniffled as he looked at the woman's blurry outline. Promises were fake. Promises were made to be broken. Promises never came true. But, he sniffed, and his iron-grip on the wand loosened and became lax.

"Promise?" he asked tentatively.

Not much, but a start.

# # #

Summer that year was warm. Harry pulled on a new pair of jeans and a nice-fitting red shirt as he looked out his window at four, Privet Drive. The sun was high in the sky, glistening off of the silver maples and the evergreens that looked out of their environment in the heat of the London summertime. 

He bounded down the stairs and peeked into the kitchen, where his Aunt Petunia was carefully making egg-salad sandwiches. Dudley had lost over a hundred pounds during the school year, due to the horrible food they had at Smeltings. But the doctor still had him on a somewhat strict diet, but egg salad seemed to be okay.

"Aunt Petunia, I'm going now," he told her. Petunia drew back her lip over her horselike teeth and nodded stiffly, as if it needed great effort.

"Okay," she said, heaping egg salad onto a slice of rye. Another pause. "Tell-tell Draco and Narcissa I said hello, would you?"

"Of course," Harry consented, walking out the door into the late July sunshine.

A lot had happened in the past three months. But it was okay. After Harry had gotten over the initial shock of having new siblings and another set of family, life had somehow gone on as normal.

At first it had seemed cruel. After all of the trauma, the sun still rose and sank, Snape still gave detention and Fred and George still played pranks on everybody and anything that moved. But Harry soon found that the steady rhythm of Hogwarts life was good for him, keeping his emotions in check and keeping him from thinking too much.

He would not be living with Narcissa. It was too much trouble, being Harry Potter in the Malfoy Mansion. And Draco sure couldn't come and see Petunia, as Petunia wasn't even really ready to see him yet. As of now, she still hadn't told Vernon and Dudley about her other son. 

It was going to take a while, getting everybody to accept everything, but it would happen eventually.

"Behind you."

Harry whirled around, to come face to face with Ron. Hermione was standing right next to him, and at a very wide distance behind them, came Draco.

The relationships between everybody were strained, but after spending a day down Knockturn Alley with Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle, Harry managed to talk Ron and Hermione into going out with him and Draco down the street for ice cream. He suspected that the only reason that Hermione and Ron were doing this was because they felt bad about the whole Cho fiasco, though Harry had assured both of them many times that he was just fine with it. 

"Hey guys," Harry said, nodding to each of them in turn.

"They had better have double-whip-chocolate-pecan-supreme," Draco announced, not stopping or slowing down for greetings. Harry looked at the boy, amused, as Draco quickly put three houses of distance between them and himself before stopping. "Are you _coming_?" Draco asked irately.

"Sure," Harry called. "But you're going the wrong way. The ice cream shop is _that_ way." And he pointed in the direction that the threesome just came in. Hermione tittered.

"He's actually rather amusing," Hermione admitted. "Just watching the guy making an ass out of himself talking to parking meters is worth the entire trip."

"They look just like intercoms!" Draco protested, storming back up.

"Let's go," Ron groaned, tugging Harry's arm.

The walk wasn't long. It wasn't quiet either, with the four of them bantering with each other, and Draco commenting loudly about how strange the lines on the road were, and that the blinking lights on the corners of the room confused him.

The fights weren't as severe as they had been in years past, however. Harry bought them all ice cream (there was no double-whip-chocolate-pecan, to Draco's loud protest), and they sat in the sun, slurping their treats before they melted.

"This flavor is interesting," Draco said, prying a lump of cookie dough out of his cone. "Not bad."

"I told you so," Hermione scoffed, licking her own scoop of the same flavor.

"Yeah, well sherbet beats all, so you both lose." A green streamer of melted ice cream drizzled onto Ron's hand and he had to lick it off quickly. Harry shook his head over his own cone of toffee-chip, and didn't answer.

"Well," Draco consented, tearing out the lump of dough with his fingers; "the mudblood has to be right sometimes."

Hermione's eyebrows snapped together angrily as she glared at Draco from beneath her bangs. "Some people never change, you know that?"

Draco shrugged.

Still angry, Hermione glared at her round scoop of white ice cream, thinking. Shrugging, she tore the knob of ice cream off her cone, grabbed the dripping mass in her hand, and threw it hard at the back of Draco's neck.

The impact of the ice cream pushed Draco slightly forward onto his cone. Harry and Ron gaped, waiting for the reaction.

"Little League," Hermione said, crunching into her sugar cone. "Five years before I came to Hogwarts. Best pitcher ever, they said."

Draco shrugged, licking his ice cream nonchalantly. "Well, you can't let good ice cream go to waste, now can you?" Reaching towards the back of his neck, he rubbed, and then came back with two fingers full of ice cream. "Lick it off," he ordered.

Hermione stared at him. Ron spluttered over his sherbet. Harry coughed on his toffee. "Eeew!" Hermione cried, covering her face. "No way!"

Draco's lips curled in a smile as he shook his head, turning back to his ice cream. "Perhaps you'd like it straight from my neck, then?"

"Nasty!" Hermione squealed, covering her face.

Draco chuckled, standing up and stretching. "Very well."

And with that he turned the cone upside down and dropped it down the back of Hermione's shirt.

Hermione screeched with the unexpected coldness and whirled around, grabbing Ron's ice cream.

"Hey!" Ron yelled, grabbing for the cone. "That's mine!"

"Malfoy, I'm going to get you!" Hermione cried, launching herself over the table at the boy. Not to be outdone, Draco grabbed Harry's toffee cone and drove it into Hermione's disheveled mop of hair.

"Give me back my ice cream!" Ron wailed, ripping open a packet of ketchup and flinging it at Malfoy. It slapped his cheek with a wet sound and left a red smear of ketchup on Draco's skin.

"This means war!" Draco yelled, lunging at Ron.

Harry ducked under the table, smothering a giggle.

So life wasn't perfect.

But, it was absolutely okay.

# # #

Kitto ok...

# # #

Quick A/N: Ah... have to go ref a soccer game, so this'll be quick. I know that the chapter is a little rushed, but I had to get it finished. Please review, and 'Kitto OK!' is not mine. Major brownie points to people that know where the song came from! (Hint: It's Japanease. ^_~)

~Moxie ^_^


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